After Angel
by musikfreakmeg
Summary: Fang drew in a ragged breath and his voice grew stronger, fierce with conviction. 'So now I'm done leaving. And I am not trying to mess you around, I promise you. But if you'll have me, then I swear to God, the next time I leave you will be the day I die.' Disclaimer: I don't own Max Ride.
1. Chapter 1

**A/N So, as the summary says, this is a continuation of the excerpt we've been given for Nevermore. Last we knew, Maya was falling and Fang couldn't move to help her. On Max's end, the flock has been shaken by Angel's death, but what happens when they get an unexpected visitor? Enjoy!**

I shivered a little in the afternoon breeze as we pulled into the driveway, swinging my leg over the seat of the motorcycle and making my way through the side gate to the backyard. My neck cracked as I tilted my head to either side to stretch out the muscles, and as I turned around the corner of the house to where I could see the rest of the flock gathered, I heard Dylan coming up behind me. He slowed to match my pace and we walked along the path together, his hand brushing mine with each step. My stomach shifted, and I couldn't tell if it was in pleasure or aversion.

Dylan had that effect on me; he'd been hanging around with us for a while now, never letting up on the idea that he loved me, we were made for each other, he'd wait as long as I needed, the whole ugly business, and my feelings for him were still absurdly conflicted. And it wasn't even the generic mix of a thousand different emotions that you hear about in every teen novel ever written. That would've been easier to deal with. But every time I saw Dylan – every time he spoke to me or came close to me or touched me – all that I felt was a rush of two extremes. So far I'd managed to conclude that I was either completely put off by his advances or entirely taken in, which was great except for the fact that I had no idea which one was right. And the thing is that when you're making these kinds of decisions – the important ones to do with stuff like how you feel about your so-called 'perfect match' – right is kind of what you want to be. Just sayin'.

The flock was sprawled out on the backyard deck. It had been six days since we'd left Paris, and now we were holed up in a house in Oregon, courtesy of our friends at the CSM. We'd thought about going back to my mom's house, since it was just about the closest thing any of us had to a home, but there was so much uncertainty about where my mom was and how she fit into the whole picture that in the end it seemed dangerous to go back there. Besides, it would've been too empty without her and Ella. I'd wanted to start searching for them straight away, to get out there and work out what the heck was going on, find what was left of my family, and beat the crap out of the people who'd taken them from me. But one look at the flock told me there was no way we were going to manage it; we needed time to rest and try to pull ourselves back together. Looking around, I felt another pang in my gut that had nothing to do with Dylan as I did an instinctive head count and momentarily forgot that I was only counting for five now. For a second I almost couldn't breathe as tears threatened to give my pride a second roundhouse kick to the head. _No, _I chided myself. _Breaking down in front of Dylan was bad enough. You are _not _letting the others see you like that. Again. God knows it's happened enough recently. Suck it up. _

'Everything been okay here?' I asked, wincing inwardly at how hollow the question sounded; 'okay' wasn't a word that could be used to describe the state we were in anymore. After everything we'd been through, everything and everyone we'd lost, it looked like we'd finally been pushed to our limits. For what felt like the thousandth time in the past few days, my mind raced through the people we hadn't managed to hold onto: Ari, Jeb, Ella, my mom, Fang, Angel… Some of them had been lost, then found, then lost again. And now it was kind of like my flock had been broken, like we'd suffered one loss too many.

'Yeah, great,' Iggy said dully. 'No one ran away. No one died. It's all been peachy keen.' He sat slumped in a deckchair, his long, pale fingers twitching in his lap. At his words, Gazzy's face crumpled and fresh tears started to follow the old dried tracks down his face. This was a kid who, before everything went to heck, had refused to cry at any number of things, including broken bones, running from genetically-manipulated monsters, and the failure of any kind of father figure he might ever have had. But things had changed; he'd lost his sister, the only blood relative he knew of, and to make things worse, I knew that he blamed himself. In his mind, _he'd _tried to diffuse the blocks of C-4, _he'd_ failed to get them all in time, and _he'd _flown away without making absolutely sure Angel was with him.

Nudge sniffed as she put an arm around Gazzy, letting him cry into her shoulder. The corners of her mouth wavered, but no tears fell, and at that moment I realised just how quickly she'd had to grow up. Even when we were on the run from the School, looking for food in dumpsters, or running off to Antarctica, Nudge had still been a child; an almost-teenage girl who redesigned her military uniform to make it more fashionable and tried to pass herself off as 'Cinnamon Allspice La Fever'. Over the last few days I'd watched her harden, and now she was stoic, quiet.

It broke my heart to see them like this, so in pieces and dejected and melancholy. Or at least, broke it more than it already was, somehow. _So this is what's become of us. _I felt anger welling up inside me; anger at myself for letting this happen, for allowing things to reach this point. Despite everything we'd been through before, every sucky, awful, whacked out thing, my flock had _never_ given up, _never_ stopped fighting. And what kind of a leader was I that I was letting everything fall apart now? The old Max would have known what to do. The old Max would've found a way to get them up off the ground and into sky and on their way to being something resembling okay again. But I wasn't her anymore. Instead, I was this pathetic, weepy mutant with no clue how to fix all the crap that had gone wrong. I swear to God or whoever turns out to be running this messed up joint, if me last year could see me now, she'd think that someone had tried to pull the old replacing-Max-with-a-clone stunt, and made an awful job of it, too.

I took in a breath to say something, anything, but before I could get a word out, a shrill yelp came from inside the house. We all tensed, five heads snapping towards the large doors that led out from the house to the yard, and a small part of me – the part that wasn't busy wondering whether or not I'd be able to kick an attacker through the wall surrounding the backyard if need be – registered relief at the others' reactions to the sound; at least they weren't so far gone that they didn't even respond. Maybe there was hope. I relaxed a little as Total came racing through the doors, yelping again in what was possibly the most genuinely dog-like sound I'd ever heard him make.

'Total? What's up?'

'Get through here. You're going to want to see this,' he said, not giving me a chance to reply before turning around and tearing back into the house. Wholly confused, I shot a glance towards Dylan, whose turquoise eyes were wide and perplexed. The deckchairs scraped across the floor as Nudge and Gazzy jumped up and ran through the doors after Total.

'Be careful!' I shouted. I was pretty sure that Total would have mentioned it if there was a bunch of bloodthirsty axe murderers hanging out in the kitchen, but sadly, in my life, 'pretty sure' doesn't really tend to cut it. Moving quickly, I followed the kids through the living room, preparing myself for any manner of things. As I reached the door leading to the hallway, I heard Gazzy's voice ringing out.

'Holy mother-'

'Gazzy! Wha-' I froze. '_Preparing myself for any manner of things', my ass. _Because standing in the hallway, hair messy and face painfully familiar beneath a ton of new bruises and cuts, was Fang.

Of course.

Because this is _me _we're talking about.

There was dead silence for a moment as everyone took the scene in. I looked at Gazzy and Nudge standing to the side in front of me, their eyes like saucers. I turned to see Dylan and Iggy in the doorway behind me. Dylan's face openly conveyed his surprise and distrust, and Iggy was frowning unseeingly at the floor, probably listening hard to make sure he really had identified Fang's breathing correctly. Turning back towards Fang, it kind of felt as though my body wasn't my own as I took one, then two slow, heavy steps in his direction. My limbs were numb, and the realisation that I could still move them at all felt like a surprise. Fang's face didn't change as I moved towards him, and I made damn sure that mine didn't, either.

I stopped in front of him, close enough that I needed to tilt my head back to be able to meet his eyes. Once again, I looked over my shoulder to see the flock clustered together behind me, utterly motionless, looking for all the world like some kind of crazy still life; I'm not even sure that there was a lot of breathing going on there. Taking a deep breath of my own, I looked back at Fang, staring right up into his face. His mouth opened, as if he were about to speak.

And that was when I punched him.


	2. Important note, please read!

SPOILERS FOR NEVERMORE BELOW!

Just to clear up any confusion about this story, I started writing it when all we'd seen of the actual Nevermore was one five-chapter extract:

(www.)max-dan-wiz(.com)/forum/topics/nevermore-excerpt-summary (remove all brackets).

When this came out I kind of assumed that it was the _opening_ extract of Nevermore, so I basically wrote After Angel as if it was carrying on from there. Therefore the stuff about Max and Dylan being on the motorbike and Maya falling from her fight with Ari's clone has all already happened, but none of the stuff about the flock going to school or the 99ers or Kate and Star being traitors is included in After Angel.

Happy reading! :)


	3. Chapter 2

Or tried to punch him, at any rate. Y'know how I said that I couldn't feel my limbs? Scratch that, 'cause I definitely felt it when Fang dodged my punch and blocked my fist with his own arm.

'Max,' he grunted, then doubled over as my knee came up and made contact with his stomach. He followed through on the movement, dropping into a crouch and sweeping a leg under my feet. I vaguely registered Iggy whispering 'are they fighting? Like, actually fighting?' to Gazzy as I lost my balance and all the air was forced out of me when I fell back against the wall. Fang leapt to his feet and darted forwards, slamming his hand down next to my head.

'Max!' By this point I could barely take in anything around me; nothing was getting past the haze of red that had come down over my eyes. I turned against the wall, my elbow moving up to catch him across the face as I came out of the twist. The force sent Fang spinning away from me, and as he went I planted a foot in his back, sending him through the door into the living room and almost throwing him into the coffee table. He managed to right himself just in time, and then he was facing me again, moving automatically into his low fighting stance that I recognised so well from all our time sparring when we were younger. The unexpected memory hit me hard and I faltered for a second, hesitating just long enough for Fang to hook me behind the knee with his foot. I stumbled, giving him the opportunity to wrap his arms around me, pinning my back against him and trapping my own arms at my sides.

'Max, stop,' he growled, and I felt the words vibrating through his chest as he bent his head so that his mouth was level with my ear. I took the opening to snap my head back, hitting him in the jaw and making him stagger backwards, his grip on me falling slack. Whipping around, I lifted my fists once more, then the next thing I knew I was straightening up in surprise as Fang's shout cut through my anger.

'Stop!' For a moment the only thing I could hear was our breathing, hard and quickened, as we stared across the room at each other. Then Fang's hands moved slowly, rising to either side of his head in the universal 'hands up' gesture of surrender. 'I'm not gonna fight you, Max. I don't want to hurt you.'

My arms fell to my sides, and I almost laughed in disbelief at his words. As if he hadn't hurt me already? As if he hadn't hit me and bruised me and broken me down to this pitiful, laughable shell of a thing? '_I don't want to hurt you.'_Too late, pal. So I did what any reasonable part-human would do: I kicked him in the head.

* * *

Fang came around a few minutes later. We hadn't bothered to move him from where he'd fallen, and the flock was spread out on the couch, looking fidgety and apprehensive. Dylan's foot jerked repeatedly – something I'd come to recognise as a sign of agitation – as his gaze moved between Fang out cold on the floor and me sat on the corner of the coffee table by his head. I leaned forwards when Fang started to stir, resting my elbows on my knees; I could feel a muscle twitching my jaw, but I kept my teeth gritted and my face blank as his eyes opened, squinting against the light coming through the glass doors. His eyelids flickered and I knew that he was cataloguing his new injuries; he shifted around and pushed himself into a sitting position when he saw me watching him.

'What are you doing here?' I asked, my voice low and humourless. Fang drew in a breath, and I noticed how exhausted he seemed, like he hadn't slept in a while. By the looks of things, he hadn't changed his clothes in a good few days, either, and the ones he had on had taken a good beating by someone else before me.

'I don't-' he started, but I cut across him, louder this time.

'I'm not interested in hearing anything unless it's an answer to my question, now _what are you doing here?_' He blinked – his version of uncertainty – and I sighed. I turned to glance at the flock and gave a slight nod; they understood my meaning and picked themselves up off the couch, heading reluctantly for the hallway. Dylan was the last to leave, pausing as he passed and shooting me a questioning look. Once more, I couldn't figure out whether I was irritated that he was trying to protect me, or pleased that he cared enough to try in the first place.

'I'm fine,' I said quietly, and he let out a sharp, bothered breath before making his own way out of the room. I watched him as he left and shut the door behind him, steeling myself before turning back to Fang on the floor in front of me. God, just looking at him hurt. Everything about him was just so _familiar,_ but at the same time somehow so alien that it almost made me feel dizzy. I wasn't angry anymore; all the anger I'd felt for him since he'd left, all the rage I'd experienced, had been poured into the hits I'd landed on him less than ten minutes ago. Now I just felt lost, and kind of gutted, and totally drained.

'Right, let's have it, then,' I said. 'What do you want?'

Fang gritted his teeth and looked down at the floor for a second, and when he raised his head again, there was pain in his face.

'She's gone.' He spoke tightly, not quite meeting my eyes, and I couldn't help the wince that crossed my face as what he said hit home. My jaw slid from one side to the other, clicking as it went, and I gradually let the breath I hadn't realised I'd been holding out as my head sank down into my hands.

'And you're just figuring this out? You've just come to that realisation?' I muttered to the floor. There was silence and I looked up to see Fang shaking his head slowly, his eyes sad and unsure.

'No, Max; Maya. She's gone. She fell.' His jaw tensed. 'She's dead.'

For a few moments all I could do was stare at him. Then before I knew it I had let out a short, harsh laugh of incredulity, and my head fell backwards to fix my gaze on the ceiling, my eyes moving back and forth across the white plane of paint and plaster.

'Unbelievable,' I breathed, the word somehow coming out soft and bitter at the same time. 'You're not being serious.' I shifted my stare back down to Fang, whose eyebrows were furrowed just slightly in uncertainty.

'Angel,' I said, and my heart sputtered as I said her name for the first time since I'd made myself hoarse shouting it across the remains of a wrecked building in Paris almost a week ago. 'Angel died, Fang. There was an explosion, and a building fell on her, and she died. And we looked for her, we searched for hours, but after that, what happened? What did you do? You gathered up your little Fang gang and you ran away. That little girl who loved you, and grew up with you, and learned from you was worth about twelve hours of your time. And now your _friend,_ who less than a year ago was trying to kill me and lead the flock back to the whitecoats, has fallen out of the sky and you're so torn up over it that you just had to come here and let me know?'

As I spoke, my voice got louder but stayed measured; I was frustrated and confused, and there was still a part of me that couldn't get around what was happening, but I sure as hell wasn't going to let it show. More than that, I was pretty certain that if I didn't keep a tight lock on my emotions then talking about Angel would trigger another breakdown, and I absolutely refused to let that happen in front of Fang. He made a strangled sound in the back of his throat, running both hands back through his hair before he spoke again:

'She looked like you.'

'She _was_ me,' I retorted through gritted teeth. 'And I know, I know, she was her own person and she was unique and special and she wasn't me at all-'

'But she was.' Fang's voice was loud over mine, rough and grating. 'I mean…' His eyes closed briefly. 'When she was falling… When she was falling and I was standing there watching and I couldn't move, couldn't save her… She wasn't her then. She was you. It was you falling, and you hitting the ground, and you-' He broke off wearily, his hand raking through his hair again, making it stand up.

I felt like something inside of me collapsed at that moment. Pulling myself up onto my feet, I paced across the living room floor, the heel of my hand pressed against my forehead as if that might prevent my head from exploding. Neither of us spoke until I finally slumped against the wall opposite Fang, my legs shaking, arms crossed in front of me, shoulders hunched.

'You don't get to do this,' I whispered. 'You don't get to do this to me. Not again. Every time you leave, I have to pick up the pieces, and try to pull things back together and move on. But then every time I think that I'm anywhere close to having the slightest chance of even _beginning_ to get over you, you find a way back into my life. I can't keep doing this. I am so unbelievably tired of trying to figure you out, Fang. I mean… I hate you. I hate you for what you've done to me and what you've turned me into and the fact that you can't just let me get on with my life, but the insane, sick thing is that at the same time I still love you. I love you so much that it hurts. All the time. And there's this part of me, this stupid, messed-up part of me that, whenever you come back, thinks that maybe, just maybe, we'll be able to find a way to become ourselves again, but it never happens. You just… leave.' My voice dropped so low that Fang probably wouldn't have been able to hear me if it weren't for those whacky genetic modifications. 'You leave. Even after you told me you never would again.'

With horror, I felt tears starting for the third time in less than two hours. I was really on a roll. I brought my hand up to my mouth in the hopes that I might be able to hold everything in, but then Fang started getting to his feet. Slowly, without saying a word, he walked forwards until he was standing right in front of me. His hand came up to lean against the wall by my shoulder, and he bent his head down until our faces were level; his eyes met mine, and I almost stopped breathing at the emotion in them. For once, he wasn't guarded, wasn't hiding, and when he spoke, his voice was raw:

'I never wanted to leave you.' I tried to snort derisively and turn away, but his other hand grabbed my chin and pulled my face back. 'Maximum, I never wanted to leave you. Before I actually did it I didn't believe that anything could ever make me. I have loved you for so long.' His voice wavered a little and there was a pang in my chest so strong I nearly flinched. 'Longer than you know. And the idea that I could be putting you in danger? That I could be hurting you without us even realising it? That killed me. More than leaving you did. Only just, but it was enough. I am so, so sorry, Max. I really thought I was doing the right thing. But watching Maya falling, all I could think was 'in what twisted universe would we ever be better off apart?'.' He drew in a ragged breath and his voice grew stronger, fierce with conviction. 'So now I'm done leaving. And I am not trying to mess you around, I promise you. But if you'll have me, then I swear to God, the next time I leave you will be the day I die.'

My head was pounding. Suddenly, I was massively aware of all the blood moving around my body, and my airway felt like it was about half its normal size. This was too much. If I'd thought I was experiencing inner conflict with Dylan, that was nothing compared to the full-on war that was going on inside me now. The two halves of me crashed against each other with enough force to make me shiver; one side was yelling to punch his lights out and throw him onto the street outside, to not let him get close enough to hurt me again, but the other was shouting to trust him, to trust _Fang_, this guy I'd known almost my whole life, who by the sounds of it had loved me before Dylan even existed.

I looked into his face, trying to work out how the hell I could even attempt to answer him, and then, without warning, I was thrust into a memory; all of a sudden I could see him standing in front of me in a narrow corridor with his head dipped so that his eyes met mine, just as he was now. In the memory, I wrenched my arms out of his grip and made to push past him, then faltered as he spoke, his tone low, dark:

'_There's a you and me, alright. There will always be a you and me.'_

Oh, no. Too much, too much. Too much history and too much emotion and too much water under the bridge. I had to get away from him. I needed some time without him standing over me and looking at me with that face – God, that _face_ – because right now I could barely think straight, let alone make this kind of decision. So, without breaking eye contact, I stepped slowly around him. Then I turned away, crossed the room, and left.


	4. Chapter 3

It was dark when Fang got back to where his gang had set up camp. His shoulders were aching after days of almost constant fighting and flying, but he was past caring. As he touched down, his eyes automatically darted around the camp, making a rapid analysis of the area; part of him wanted to believe that maybe they'd thrown the newly-instated Erasers off their backs for a while, but the more realistic side of him said it would be stupid to drop his guard.

Kate and Holden were sitting by the small fire that illuminated the campsite, talking quietly as Star lay spread out in the flickering orange light, for once neither eating like there'd be no tomorrow (which, Fang considered, seemed to be becoming more and more of a likelihood) nor about to rip Ratchet's head off. The guy in question sat a little way off, against a tree at the edge of the small clearing; his hands beat out the drum part to a song Fang couldn't hear. Walking over to where he was sitting, Fang regarded him for a moment, one eyebrow slightly raised.

'Someone over the way's having a party. Playing some decent tunes,' Ratchet explained, without looking up. Through the trees, past the limits of the woods, the lights of a small town could be seen coming from just over the brow of a hill; by the looks of things it was a good mile away at least. Fang looked back down at Ratchet, unable to help being impressed.

'Not bad,' he said in a low voice. Ratchet lifted his head and grinned, his hands stilling.

'Hey, it's what I do.'

Over by the fire, Star sat up and called over to them.

'So you gonna let us know how the area check went or what, Feathers?' Everyone turned to look in his direction, and Fang's jaw clenched almost imperceptibly as he remembered Max walking away from him.

'Nothing out of the ordinary,' he said tightly, walking towards the campfire, feeling their eyes on him as he went. Star gave a slight nod and made a move towards the backpacks of food which sat at the edge of the campsite, and for a moment it seemed like the conversation was over. Then a voice rang out from behind him.

'Well, that's a lie.' Fang groaned inwardly as he turned to see Ratchet getting to his feet, a smirk on his face. 'I don't think you're telling us the whole story.'

'What do you mean?' Kate asked.

'Ah, Katie, Katie, Katie,' Ratchet sang, sauntering over to where she was sitting and leaning himself against the top of her head. 'Let me explain the habits of the lesser-spotted Fang. You see, Mr Tall, Dark, and Silent here has certain patterns to how he works. Whenever he leaves the camp, he goes off and does whatever it is he has to do, then as he's on his way back he'll loop around to throw off any tails. Which means that every time he comes back to camp, he enters from the opposite side to the one he left from. But here's the kicker.' He ruffled Kate's hair and straightened up, his eyes fixing on Fang behind his sunglasses. 'This time, he came back the same way he'd left. So either he just decided that the habits of a lifetime were no longer necessary – unlikely – or he had something on the brain that distracted him enough for it to slip his mind. If you ask me, his little field trip was _very_ out of the ordinary indeed.'

Every eye in the campsite turned towards Fang, who glared at Ratchet as he shrugged, grinning like a shark, and said,

'Hey man, when you're packing super sensory everything, you tend to notice stuff.' He flopped onto the ground next to the fire and winked at Star, who scowled and rolled her eyes, turning to look in Fang's direction.

'So, as repulsive as it is to say, can we take it that Ratchet's correct given how you're looking at him as if he just peed all over you laptop?'

Holden snorted. Fang took a slow, deep breath, trying to rearrange his face into something as impassive as possible; it felt harder to manage than usual tonight.

'I was just thinking about our next move. Guess I forgot,' he said, lowering himself onto the ground and picking up a stick to poke at the fire. Star glanced at Kate, her eyebrows raised, and Fang knew she hadn't been convinced.

'So what took you so long, then? Normally recon only keeps you for an hour or so.' His hand tightened around the stick.

'Checked out the towns around us, too. Wanted to make sure there was nothing to worry about after the attacks we've been getting.' At the edge of his vision, Fang saw Ratchet shake his head, calling him out. No one said anything for a few seconds, and then Kate looked up at him from her place across the campfire.

'You went to see her, didn't you? Max.' She said the name as if it were one of Gazzy and Iggy's bombs, as if she were worried that handling it wrongly could cause it to explode in her face. The camp fell dead still. Suddenly everything seemed super-intense; the roughness of the stick in Fang's hand, the ground beneath him, the glare from the fire. The sound of his heart beating seemed to echo through him, wisps of smoke from the burning wood felt like they were sticking in his throat, and Fang wondered briefly if this was what life was like for Ratchet – everything more than it should be. Kate's voice cut into his head as she continued talking, pulling him back to reality.

'It would be understandable if you did, you know. What with Maya and everything…' She trailed off, looking pained, then took a deep breath and carried on. 'It must've been hard for you, watching that. And it must've dragged up a lot of thoughts about Max. So it would make sense for you to want to see her now.'

Fang just about managed to stop himself from running a hand through his hair – it was becoming a bit of a nervous habit and irritated the hell out of him – and although his face didn't change, he let a breath out sharply through his nose.

'They're staying in a house a couple of hours away from here. I went by to let them know what had happened. We talked.'

'That how you got that new bruise on your jaw? Talking?' Ratchet retorted, and, not for the first time, Fang considered that having someone in the gang who noticed everything wasn't necessarily helpful all the time.

'We fought. Before we talked. That was it.'

'Girl got a couple of good hits in, by the looks of it. What'd you talk about?' At Ratchet's words, Holden winced.

'I don't think he wants to tell us.' Before anyone could respond, Fang pulled himself off the ground, walked away from the fire, and launched himself up into the nearest tree. Settling himself into the nook between two branches, he threw an arm across his closed eyes. Beneath him he could hear the others talking quietly.

'Someone's talkative today.' Ratchet. Then a slapping sound quickly followed by an indignant yelp.

'Shut it, nimrod. Clearly something went down. Jeez, don't be an insensitive ass your whole life, okay?' Star.

'Insensitive? I'm as sensitive as they come, baby.'

Kate's voice cut in:

'I think he just needs a bit of space. And he can probably hear everything we're saying just now.'

Silence.

When the whispers started up again, Fang tuned them out. He thought back over his visit to the flock. It wasn't as if he'd been expecting anything other than what had happened; the kick to the head might have been unanticipated, but it _was _Max. And Max was unpredictable. Especially now. Fang's eyes screwed up beneath the crook of his arm. There had been a time, not all that long ago, when he could read her so well. There had been this crazy kind of communication between them which had sometimes been so clear that it made Fang wonder if Angel really was the only one who could read minds in the flock. And now, because of him, it was gone.

But was it, really? Because for a moment, when they'd been left alone and actually managed to have a conversation that _meant_ something, everything about her seemed so easy to understand; the way she touched her face when she got anxious, the expression she put on when he knew she was trying to hide something, the clenching of her jaw as she stared at him and tried to figure out what to say next. Was it seriously possible for someone to seem so recognisable and so strange at the same time?

Not that it mattered. He'd screwed up – again – and now it didn't make any difference whether he could still read her or not. The way she'd walked out, without saying anything… Fang wouldn't have expected it to end well, not for a second, but that didn't make watching her leave any less gut-wrenching. It didn't make it any less painful. _Guess we all get what's coming to us. _

And losing Maya was another thing to add to the list of awful stuff that had been going on. He never would have thought that he'd become so close to the person who had originally been created to help terminate the flock, but over time Fang had come to know her as herself, rather than as Max, and she'd turned into a real friend. Almost without him realising. So when she fell, there was a part of him that was stunned by how much it hurt. Not to mention the guilt; not only did he fail to save her, but one of her biggest insecurities was grounded in the fact that everyone expected her to be just like her original template. She'd put so much time and energy into becoming her own person, and then at the moment of her death all that Fang could do was see her as Max. Some friend he was.

He'd been lying there for a good two hours and the camp below him had fallen still when he felt a buzzing his pocket. Pulling his cell phone out, he squinted against the sudden light of the screen. Glancing down, he saw the others sprawled out in various positions across the campsite, all asleep except for Holden, who was sitting with his back against a tree taking watch. A slight frown appeared on Fang's face as he looked back at the phone, his mind racing trying to figure out who could be calling. He sat up on the branch as he answered.

'Hell-'

'If you want to bring your little gang along with you then you're gonna have to call John Abate. Ask him to get stuff put in the other bedrooms.' His heart quickened and he nearly fell out of the tree.

'Max?' She gave a short, tense-sounding huff in response, and he felt a slight twitching at the corners of his mouth in spite of everything; definitely Max. 'So… You're saying it's okay for us to come? For… For good?'

'I guess I am.' Her voice was strained, and Fang could tell that she was nowhere near certain of her decision. 'Not now. Midday tomorrow.'

'Okay,' he replied. 'Max, are you su-'

'Don't push it, Fang.' The line went dead and Fang stared at the phone, trying to work out what had just happened. Midday tomorrow. He felt a sudden lurch of nervousness and held his breath for a moment, not entirely unconvinced that he might be about to throw up. The churning in his stomach lessened by a fraction, and he leaned back against the trunk of his tree. Inhaling sharply, he gave his head one good, hard hit against the rough bark. It hurt; he wasn't dreaming, then. It wasn't until then that he allowed himself to smile. Just briefly, just to get it out. Things weren't fixed, not by a long way; there was still a hell of a lot that needed to be done, but they were a damn lot closer to being on their way than they had been five minutes ago.

The next morning, Fang dropped down from the tree and walked towards the centre of the campsite, where the ashes from last night's fire were being scattered by the light wind. He kicked Ratchet – who had the dangerous habit of falling asleep during his watch - awake as he passed, and his startled cry woke the others, all of whom instantly jumped to their feet looking ready to fight.

'Wa's gon' on?' Ratchet muttered as he picked himself up off the ground. Fang turned to face them, feeling jittery, wired with nervous energy.

'Pack up, guys,' he said. 'We're relocating.'


	5. Chapter 4

'He's coming back?'

I stood at the head of the kitchen table, four stunned faces and one slightly furrier stunned face staring at me.

'He's coming _back_?' Gazzy repeated, looking as though his eyes were about to pop out of his head.

'They all are,' I replied, trying to keep my tone as calm as possible, to not let them know how uncertain I was. 'Him and the rest of the gang.'

'When exactly was this decided?' Dylan asked. I looked over to where he was sitting on the work surface, arms folded over his chest and face twisted in a mixture of confusion, pain, and anger.

'Last night,' I said, holding his gaze. I'd relayed a slightly modified version of the conversation Fang and I had yesterday to the flock just after he left, telling them about Fang's proposition and what had happened to Maya, but leaving out some of the more personal parts of the discussion. Their shock on my behalf was kind of encouraging, but that night I sat up thinking through all the reasons why I should and shouldn't let Fang back into my life. When I called him, I couldn't tell if I was doing it because it was right or because I just wanted to do _something_ about the muddled up thoughts that were taking a joy ride around my head. It didn't make it any easier to sleep; I think I passed out at around four, and when I woke a few hours later my eyes were dry and irritated. The light from the computer screen in front of me had dimmed, but the page I'd been looking at right before I feel asleep was still visible: a page from Fang's blog, dating back to the first time he'd left, when the flock had been broken apart by my choice to keep Ari with us. Most of it was just him replying to random overenthusiastic readers, but there were a couple of lines at the start of the post that I must have read a gazillion times (if we're being precise about it) during the night: **We're on our way to rejoin Max. Don't have time to rehash all the details, but let's just say that I've decided a flock ought to stick together while they can.**

I was brought back to the present by Dylan's voice.

'And you're sure this is a good idea? After everything he's done?' The grip I held on the back of the chair in front of me tightened, and I looked away from him, biting the inside of my mouth to stop myself from snapping. No judging – you'd be irritable too if you were being run through the emotional wringer and not getting any sleep. Then Iggy piped up, a slight grimace on his face as he stared blindly at a patch of wall.

'Max, I've gotta say the same on this one. I mean, I want the flock to be together as much as the next bird kid, but things weren't so smooth-going last time. Are you sure that-' I felt myself flushing in frustration.

'No! No, I'm not sure. Look at me – I'm a wreck. I'm nervous as hell. I don't know how it's gonna turn out, I don't know if I made the right decision, I don't know if it's a good thing. But the way I see it, he left to protect us, and I don't know about you guys, but since he's been gone _I _certainly haven't felt any safer. Seems like crap happens whether he's around or not, so we might as well have everyone together. And what with Angel not being here anymore-' Gazzy made a small, pained noise in the back of his throat. '-it feels as though _not _keeping a tight hold of everyone we have left… Well, it's just feels real stupid.' I shook a little at saying Angel's name, but it was starting to get the slightest, tiniest bit easier; now I only _felt_ like throwing up whenever she was mentioned, rather than _actually_ throwing up (sadly not an exaggeration considering the first couple of days after she died).

'You crazy kids,' muttered Total, shaking his head then resting it on his paws. 'So much drama.'

Nudge was nodding her head, a small smile on her face for the first time in close to a week. I could practically see the old animation coming back to her, and the relief almost made me want to cry. Almost.

'I agree with you, Max,' she said. 'We're a flock. We shouldn't be split up.'

Gazzy sniffled, then looked up at me, his eyes sad but resolved, his mouth set in a tight little line.

'Yeah,' he said, voice wavering just a bit.

I don't think I'll ever stop being amazed by these kids.

Iggy's head bobbed slightly, and I could tell he was still uneasy, but I noticed the hint of a twitch at the corners of his mouth; as much as his head might have been saying it was a bad idea, he wanted to see the family reunited. There had been a few things on my list of reasons to make that call to Fang. This had been one of them: I'd hoped that maybe bringing about such a big change would force the flock out of their stupor and kick start some action that had actual purpose behind it. Watching them now, it looked as if it had worked – they were more alive than they had been in days.

Only Dylan seemed to be in outright disagreement.

'This is a mistake. I don't think you're doing the right thing,' he said, his turquoise eyes boring into me.

'Okay,' I said agreeably, heartened by the change I was starting to see in the flock. 'That's allowed. But at the end of the day, I'm the leader here. I may not know for sure that this is the right decision, but I made it with everyone's best interests in mind.'

_**It is the right decision, Max.**_ I started slightly as the Voice sounded in my head, but right now it was like nothing could throw me off my stride.

_Voice. It's been a while._

_**So it has. Things have been… Unrested. It was too dangerous to try and contact you. But I can tell you now that you **_**have **_**made the right choice.**_

_Just like that? No riddles, no puzzles that belong in a cryptic crossword?_ When the Voice piped up again, it sounded faintly amused, as though it might have been laughing at me.

_**You don't see what's interesting about the way in which Fang is returning to the flock?**_

_Aaand there we go. Puzzle time. No, I don't see what's interesting about the way in which Fang is returning to the flock. Please, deign to enlighten me. _This time I could've sworn I heard a chuckle.

_**How many times did you run away from him? **_I frowned, and at the edge of my awareness I knew that the flock was still sitting in front of me, watching me carefully, waiting for an explanation. I held up a hand; they would just have to hold on a minute.

_Run away? _

_**From the cave, from the dock... **_I felt a hot flush spread across my face as I realised what the Voice meant.

_Don't you think there's something just a bit twisted about watching in on that sort of thing? _If thoughts could sound scathing, mine definitely fit the bill.

_**That's twice you ran from him. Then the third time, in the desert, you stayed. How many times has he left you? Just him, of his own accord? **_I huffed grudgingly.

_Twice, I guess._

_**So this is the third chance he's getting. And this time he'll stay. **_

_How can you know that? And since when were you a supporter of the flock being together? Last time I heard, you agreed with Fang going away._

_**Times change. Circumstances change. You had something to learn from Fang leaving you. And now that you've learned it, it's time for the flock to come together again. For good. I know it because things tend to have a funny way of falling into a pattern. History repeats itself. Connections are everywhere. You ran twice, he ran twice. The third time you stayed, and so will he. It's a strange sort of symmetry, don't you think? **_I gave my head a shake. Clearly I thought too soon when I asked where all the riddles were.

_So that's why you piped up now? To tell me that I'm making the right choice? _

_**That, and to remind you that history is important. Sometimes you need to look back in order to move forwards. I shall speak to you again soon, Maximum, situation permitting. **_I rolled my eyes.

_Can't wait. I'll pencil you in. _Then the Voice was gone, and my head belonged to me again. The flock was staring at me, eyebrows quirked, waiting for my account of what had just happened.

'Well, the Voice has decided to join us again.' Iggy leaned against the table, watching me with what seemed like unnerving accuracy until I remembered that the kitchen walls were white.

'So what was it saying?'

'The usual bundle of cryptic comments about connections and patterns and junk. It said something about things being unrested, but God knows we knew that already. And it agrees with Fang and his group coming to join us.' At that, Dylan gave a small grunt of scepticism. I turned to him, and something about having taken charge of what was happening, having made a decision, gave me a surge of energy. I tilted my chin up, looking at him calmly and feeling the most in control that I had in what seemed like ages.

'Dylan, I'm sorry that you're not happy with my decision. But it _is _my decision. I've thought it through and I have my reasons. This is what's happening.' With a firm nod to really seal the deal, I took another look at the flock sat around the room in front of me, then turned and walked out of the kitchen. As I went, Total's voice floated after me into the hall.

'_Someone's _got her fire back.' I felt a grin start to spread across my face. It was a little strained, as if the muscles that made it happen were rusty from lack of use, but it was there. _Maybe I have_, I thought. Maybe things were finally starting to look up.

Two hours later, the doorbell rang.


	6. Chapter 5

**A/N It is four in the bloody morning. I should not be awake. Appreciate this.**

Cut to one of the most awkward silences ever. Everyone sat in the living room, the two groups positioned opposite each other, and the expressions on their faces ranged from nervous smiles (Nudge and Kate), to boredom (Star and Ratchet), to discomfort, to distaste, to apprehension. We're talking a _seriously _awkward silence, here. The two groups meeting in Paris had been surreal enough, but that was on neutral territory; here, in our house, the strangeness was one hundred times more concentrated. I leaned against the wall, watching them all with my eyebrows raised. When the silence got so much that it seemed to have a buzz of its own, I rolled my eyes, sighed, and pushed myself off the wall, taking a couple of strides into the middle of the room.

'_Really?_ Guys, I know that this has all been pretty sudden, and the circumstances are a little bizarre, but we're not that different. We've all been through the same shit, and we're all fighting for the same thing. It should not be this difficult to find a way to relate to each other.' I looked from side to side, my hands spread like 'come on'. When all I got was people shifting uncomfortably in their seats, I looked up at the ceiling as if some higher power might help me out by slapping them all in their mutant faces. When that didn't work, I clapped my hands, rubbing the palms together, and gave a sharp nod. _Let's do this._

'Okay. Kate, do you like fashion?' She looked up abruptly, surprised at being singled out.

'Um, sure,' she said hesitantly, uncertain as to where I was headed.

'Great. Nudge loves it. Go wild. Iggy, you like making things explode as loudly as possible? I'm sure that Ratchet, what with his crazy sensitive hearing and all, will have something to say about that little hobby of yours. Star, you eat insane amounts of food? Meet Gazzy. Holden, you can heal yourself? So can Dylan. How's about that?' No one moved. I gave them my best glare and curled my hands into fists, and when I spoke I sounded pretty damn dangerous, if I do say so myself. 'They're called icebreakers, people. Use them or so help me, so much ass will be kicked that none of you will be sitting down for the next week. Now _go_!'

Slowly, and with varying degrees of enthusiasm, the two sides of the room started to merge, and self-conscious conversation began. I plonked myself down on the couch, surveying my handiwork, and then a quiet voice sounded to my right:

'Impressive.'

I kept my eyes trained ahead, not turning to look at Fang as I answered.

'Like I said, we're not that different.'

'So does that leave us talking with each other?' he asked, and this time I did look around at him. His dark eyes scrutinised me, his face impassive, and for a moment I flashed back to the way he'd looked the day before; so open, leaving himself completely unguarded.

'You can go talk to Total. Get reacquainted,' I said, then hauled myself off the couch and went over to join Ratchet and Iggy, who were starting to work themselves into what looked like a fairly heated debate about the pros and cons of explosions.

* * *

By evening, the two groups were beginning to interact without me having to threaten them with bruised behinds. Everything was still said with an air of cautiousness, and you could see that they all preferred to be with the people from their own crowd, but for the most part things were going as smoothly as I could have expected. Only a few blips remained:

First off, Fang and Dylan still couldn't seem to get along. I'd thought that they'd kind of made their peace in France, but it apparently that had only held true under the assumption that they were never going to see each other again. Now that they were living in the same space, the tension between them was as substantial as always, but I wasn't going to break my back trying to smooth things over; they were big boys, they could work out their own issues. Besides, I suspected that getting involved probably wouldn't help any.

The second hitch was Star. She seemed way less inclined to mingle than the others, and as soon as the extra bedrooms had been made up she'd shut herself in one of them for the rest of the afternoon, only coming out periodically to get food. When she disappeared again after eating what seemed like half the dinner table, I followed her upstairs a few minutes later. I gave a couple of cursory knocks, waited a few seconds with no response, then opened the door into her room to see her lying flat out on the bed, eyes closed. She wasn't in the uniform that she'd been wearing last time we met, but she was sporting a green polo and khaki pants; I guess the preppy look just spoke to her.

'Why bother knocking if you're gonna come in anyway?' she muttered caustically.

I shrugged.

'Trying to be polite.'

'Well, that failed.'

'It's never been a strong point of mine.' At that she opened her eyes and turned her head to look at me standing in the doorway.

'If you're here to drag me downstairs then I'd like to see you try.'

I shook my head, moving a little into the room.

'No dragging. Just wondered if you wanted hot chocolate. The others are making some.'

She regarded me warily through narrowed eyes, as if trying to figure out what my ulterior motive was, then shook her head. I nodded and went to leave, but her voice rang out after me.

'Why'd you bother asking?' I turned back to see her sitting up, looking at me with suspicion. 'I'm not a part of your flock. None of us are. Why are you being so… Nice?' She grimaced like the word left a bad taste in her mouth.

I dug my hands into my pockets and my eyes wandered around the room as I thought about my answer. Check me out, thinking before I speak. That right there is a little thing called progress.

'I don't know. I wouldn't have before.'

'You _didn't_ before.'

I nodded in concession.

'Touché. But I realised something, like, yesterday: there's really no point in making a decision and not following through on it properly. Seems like it would be pretty stupid to invite you guys to join us and then not treat you like you were a part of the group. It wouldn't get us anywhere. Why choose to do something and then not give it everything I've got?'

Star flopped back down and rolled her eyes, but I thought that maybe it was done with a bit less bitterness than I'd been feeling from her before.

'Sounds like some kind of cheesy proverb.'

'Yeah, I don't know what happened to me. It's like all of a sudden I'm _wise_ or something. Must be getting old.' I quipped, and this time she gave a hint of a grudging smile. I studied her from where I stood. 'So are you just not in favour of this merging or what?'

Star scowled and rubbed at her eyes with the heels of her hands.

'I'm not a people person. People are loud and stupid and annoying. No offence,' she said, not really sounding as if she cared whether I was offended or not.

'None taken.'

'Plus, I burn energy really fast. Sitting around talking and stuff just takes up effort that I could be using to do other things.'

I didn't reply, and we just stayed like that for a bit, her frowning at the ceiling and me standing between the bed and the door.

'Was it weird for you, hearing about Maya?' she asked suddenly. I raised my eyebrows; that wasn't a question I'd been expecting. Star looked at me and I saw genuine attentiveness in her face.

'Um… I guess I haven't really given myself the chance to work out how I feel about it,' I said slowly. 'Things have been on the go since I heard; hasn't really been a spare moment for me to stop and think about it.'

She nodded, not meeting my gaze.

'It must be strange. 'Cause you didn't know her very well, and when you first met her she was trying to kill you and all, but you're the same. Or the same but different, anyway. You had the same DNA. So she was kind of a part of you. And now she's gone.'

I frowned.

'Yeah, it's a strange kind of loss, I guess. You seem to have a good handle on how it feels.' I watched her as she breathed in deeply, linking her fingers together and stretching her arms out into the air above her so that her knuckles cracked.

'I suppose I do. I had a twin. An identical one. Our parents split up when we were babies, too young to remember. But our mom took her and left me with our dad. I never met her after that, but about a year before I was taken I heard news that she'd died. Drug overdose.'

'That sucks.' I got the feeling she wasn't the kind of person who would take well to 'I'm sorry'.

Neither of us spoke for a while. Then she looked at me, sighed, and rolled off the bed.

'Okay, I'll go down for a bit,' she said, walking past me and out into the hall. 'Might as well. I was wanting to get more food anyway; need to keep stocked up in case those bloody Erasers show up again.'

I turned around so fast I nearly fell over.

* * *

I eventually found Fang sitting outside, where he'd been leaning, unmoving, against the wall of the house facing into the backyard, staring at the sky which was getting darker by the minute as night fell. He looked up when I opened the door, breaking his stillness and causing him to become visible again.

'Erasers. Ari. Explain,' I seethed, glaring down at him.

He blinked.

'We fought Erasers. One of them looked like Ari.'

I gave a slight growl of frustration.

'I _know_ that, but why didn't you _tell_ me?'

'Didn't get all that much of a chance to,' he said quietly. 'You've been avoiding talking to me since we got here.' I flushed. 'Besides, it didn't seem all that important; just another mad scientist trying to mess with our minds.'

I hated the fact that he was probably right.

'You still should've said something,' I muttered, folding my arms in front of me and glancing out across the yard, automatically scanning for any shapes in the bushes.

'Why was this in Gazzy's wardrobe?'

I looked down at Fang, who was holding out a rumpled, black sweatshirt. My eyebrows went way up, my mouth opened in surprise, and I took a step closer in spite of myself.

'Wow, I'd forgotten…' I trailed off, blinking. It was one of Fang's old hoodies, one I'd taken a couple of months ago when we were still together. 'The guys from the CSM brought a bunch of stuff over from Mom's house for us. They must've picked it up from the bottom of my wardrobe and gotten it mixed in with Gazzy's things.'

Our eyes met and I could see him struggling with something. Apparently he lost.

'You kept it?'

My face screwed up briefly and I rubbed at my forehead.

'I wanted to get rid of it. Ella convinced me not to; she said that I'd regret it.' A wave of guilt and worry washed over me – I should have been out looking for my sister, and instead I was doo-dallying around playing mediator for a bunch of genetically-enhanced kids. 'Said that if I didn't want to see it anymore then I should stuff it away somewhere I could forget it existed, but if I threw it away then one day I would wish that I hadn't.'

'Would you?'

I swallowed hard.

'There's no point talking about how things might have turned out, Fang,' I said in a low voice.

He watched me for a moment, and I felt myself squirming under his gaze. Finally, he spoke:

'You've changed.'

I laughed a little at that, looking at him with a sad smile.

'What exactly were you expecting?'

Our eyes found each other's again, and this time we held the connection for longer. Then I drew in a long breath, took a few steps across the decking, and sat myself down next to him.

We didn't talk anymore. We just stayed like for a while; sitting, not touching, not speaking, both of us just looking out into the night.


	7. Chapter 6

It was dark, and all Angel knew was pain; pain in her limbs from being forced to fight tougher and tougher opponents, pain in her throat where the tube rasped every time she swallowed, pain in her mind from the probing fingers of thought that pushed their way in and pulled her brain apart from the inside. She'd forgotten where she was, couldn't remember where she'd come from anymore, and even her name was starting to become fuzzy in her head. _Angel, Angel, Angel... _If she repeated it over and over again, maybe it wouldn't disappear. Aside from that small fact about herself, there was very little she knew: the people in the white coats hurt her, but they also decided when the hurting stopped; her cage was a safe place, away from the needles and the hard hands and the wolf men; shapes lived in the other cages around her, and sometimes they moved or cried or shouted or growled…

Somewhere in the back of her broken mind a thought flickered, too faint to identify. In her most lucid moments, Angel could almost make it out; there were some people, somewhere. Some people who had been good to her. People who had saved her before? Perhaps. But it was hard to pick out the real memories from the manipulated images and synthetic thoughts that trembled inside her head. Everything was so fragile in there. Everything was wavering, as if it would collapse in on itself with the slightest wrong step. So when she could, Angel didn't move. She lay in her cage, and she didn't speak, and she barely let herself breathe, desperate to hold onto whatever was left of her.

She clung to that; the fact that she could still think enough to _want_ to remember. There would come a point, she thought, when she would stop caring, and then the people in the white coats would win. Then, the nice people in her hazy thoughts, the ones who had wings like she did, would never be able to save her. In a way it didn't matter to her whether they were real or not – they were something to keep her here, to keep her alive. They were her friends.

A bright, white light shone suddenly in her eyes, excruciating after the darkness. She let out a cry, and her voice was grating from not having made any sound other than shouts of pain in what felt like years. How long had it really been? Days? Weeks? Longer?

'So, my dear, what's going on in that little brain of yours today?' The voice was deep and calm, and it made Angel relax just a tiny bit; her basic instincts took over, interpreting the voice as gentle and making her think for a moment that maybe the man wasn't going to hurt her. Then the needle was slipped into her forehead, through that little hole they'd made in her skull ages ago so that they could have direct access to her frontal lobe. There were ones just like it spread across her head, allowing entry to the different parts of her brain. Machines buzzed and voices whispered as the activity in Angel's frontal lobe was monitored:

'No difference. We're still getting a depleted reading on her.'

'It shouldn't be a surprise. She's like an animal now. An animal with extraordinary cerebral abilities, but an animal all the same. Instinctive reactions are becoming more and more prominent. Her higher mental functions haven't been utilised properly in ages, she's not using that part of her brain to its full potential anymore… It's not as if she's been spending a lot of her time here thinking about the consequences of her actions or worrying about whether anything she says is socially acceptable. The neural tracts aren't being worked nearly as much as a normal person's are. The only things she might still be doing with it is drawing parallels between treatments and tests and the like, or making the connection that she doesn't like us.'

'So the frontal lobe can be disregarded from now on?'

'I should think so. Check in on it from time to time, but don't dwell on it for too long. Let's have a look at the temporal now.'

The needle slid out of her forehead and was replaced into her temple. The voices started up again, but Angel's hearing had gone fuzzy. That was something else she knew: when the sharpness was in the crown of her head, she couldn't seem to understand what words meant anymore; when it was at the base of her skull, her vision started to flicker and colours went weird; when it was in the very top of her head, parts of her would tingle, or hurt, or go numb. And when it was in the side of her head, her hearing went fuzzy.

_**Angel, can you hear me?**_ The words rang out, loud and clear, in Angel's mind. She flinched, too scared to make a sound. These brain voices frightened her; there were lots of them, sometimes coming all at once, but she only ever heard them when she was on the table. They never came to her in her cage. In her cage, she could hear quieter murmurs, ones that sounded sadder, younger. Those ones never seemed like they were pushing into her. Those ones were just _there_, in the background, and she just happened to hear them. Those one didn't hurt. Not like this voice now. This voice was an intruder, forcing itself in all loud and buzzing and reverberating through her.

_**Can you hear me? **_Angel's whole body gave a jerk as a stab of pain shot through her head.

_**Angel, I need you to tell me if you can hear me. **_The pain got worse, feeling like it was being spread thickly across the inside of her skull. Now she let out a gasp, unable to make any other noise through the blinding agony. She couldn't tell them that she could hear the voice. How could she tell them when she couldn't speak?

_Yes! Yes, I can hear, I can hear. I can hear, yes, I can hear! _She thought it as loud as she could. Anything to make the pain go away.

And it did. It drew back slowly, lessening, growing weaker, sweeping itself into a small, bearable pile by Angel's temple where the needle was being removed from her head. The voices – the normal, outside voices – became clear again.

'She definitely heard?'

'We got a positive response, so as long as Harris' technology is functioning as he said it would then yes, the subject definitely heard.'

'But no activity of the temporal lobe was recorded.'

'No, sir.'

A face came into view, suspended over Angel.

'So what's she hearing it with, then?'

More words were exchanged between the people in white coats, then hard hands grabbed her, carried her roughly out of the room and along the winding halls, and once they'd reached her Home Room they threw her into the cage. She heard footsteps moving away from her, getting quieter and quieter until a door slammed and the light disappeared, and then she moved slowly from where she'd landed; curling herself up as tightly as she could, she wound her arms around her head. It was a comforting position. It made her feel safer, like her most vulnerable parts were protected. Then Angel cried. She didn't make a sound, but her whole body shivered as the tears leaked out between her closed eyelids.

The sound of the door opening again made every muscle in her body tense. Footsteps echoed through the large room, growing louder. She willed the person to go somewhere else, to go to another cage, but the sound stopped right next to her. The small squeak of the latch sounded, and then the whole side of her cage swung outwards, leaving nothing between Angel and whoever was coming for her. She felt rather than saw the hands coming for her and she cringed away, trying to shrink into the furthest corner of the cage. But when the hands found her, they were gentle. They slid her tenderly out of the cage, cradling her in arms covered by the sleeves of a white coat.

'Oh, Angel.' The voice was hoarse and sad sounding. 'What have they done? Oh, baby girl, I wish I could help you. I'm so sorry.'

* * *

I sat up suddenly, gasping in the darkness of my room. Breathing hard, I squinted around in the dim light. _What woke me up? _Something wasn't right. I felt uneasy, my spine tingling as though someone were standing right behind me, breathing down my neck. _Right, calm down a second. You're not gonna work anything out while you're shaking like a Chihuahua in an igloo. Think back through the day. What's got you unnerved? _

I scoffed a little at my own thoughts. The day had been a whirlwind; I had every right to be feeling off centre. But this was different. There was something nagging at me, like there was a connection to be made somewhere and a part of my subconscious had figured it out, but the rest of me still needed to catch up.

_**Think it through, Max. You've got many of the pieces of the puzzle. Put it together.**_

I groaned out loud.

_Okay, either help me or go away. I cannot deal with you right now if you're not going to be useful._

_**I don't have much time. And neither do you. I can't give you the answers, but I can give you more clues. And I can put all the information into one place for you. Hopefully this will make it easier.**_

Suddenly all the adrenaline that had been shooting through my body just moments before seemed to drain away. My eyes felt unbelievably heavy and I fell back into my bed. I was asleep before I hit the pillow.

Images flashed through my head, interspersed with snippets of conversation: a man ran through a forest, his face elongating and fur sprouting from his body… 'In case those bloody Erasers show up again…' Surgeons stood around an operating table, poking and prodding at the back of their patient with gleaming silver instruments… 'Alterations are not limited to being simply pre- _or_ post-natal; _both_ are possible…' A small, hunched figure with no hair sat in a dog crate… 'Multiple failures, right from the start…' 'Experimentation has produced a wide variety of subjects, each tested against the Referee to determine value by way of resilience…' A lake shone in the afternoon sunlight… 'Things tend to have a funny way of falling into a pattern. History repeats itself…'

The barrage stopped without warning and my eyes snapped open; I was wide awake once more, and a ball of solid lead was settled in my stomach. Because all of a sudden, I knew. I knew what the Voice meant. I knew that lake. I knew what had been playing on my mind, and I knew what our next step was, what it _had_ to be. Sweeping my bedcovers aside, I raced out into the hallway, banging on the others' bedroom doors as I ran towards the stairs to the top floor.

'Ratchet!' I shouted, praying that he wasn't so used to sleeping with extra-sensory hearing that it wouldn't wake him. 'Get everyone up and get down here now!'

By this time, the flock was standing in the hallway in front of me, looking perplexed and agitated. I didn't even wait for the others to join us properly; as soon as I saw feet coming down the stairs, I blurted out my thoughts:

'The School. That's where it all started. That's where everything began. History repeats itself. We have to go back to the School.'

**A/N This chapter was a little dark. That's probably as bad as it's gonna get, at least for a while now. Don't forget to review!**


	8. Chapter 7

**A/N Again, it is somewhat late over on this side of the pond, and it seems to be the only time I can write, so apologies for any typos or whatever. I'm kind of aiming for a chapter per day, since I want to get the whole thing finished before Nevermore actually comes out - that way if I've put anything in mine that JP has put in the actual one, no one can say that I just copied the book.**

'So what exactly is this School place?' Ratchet asked. We had all made our way down to the kitchen, and now we sat around the table. It seemed that none of the newbies in the group had ever had the unfathomable joy of having visited the School before, having been experimented upon in what were no doubt lovely alternative locations, so those of us who had our membership cards to hand were giving them the lowdown.

'It's a secret facility in California, probably just like wherever it was that they played inventor with each of you guys. We grew up there.' I grimaced as memories from our time in the School washed over me like a rotting washcloth being swept across my face. 'It was where they gave us our wings, where the Erasers were made-'

'And that's why you think that we need to go there. Because the Erasers are back?' Iggy mused, his fingers playing across the wooden surface of the table.

'Partly. That, and the Voice showed me some stuff.'

Kate frowned.

'The Voice?'

I started a little, surprised by the question, then glanced around at the rest of the flock; their raised eyebrows told me that they'd made the same assumption I had about our newest recruits.

'You don't know about Max's Voice?' Nudge established. 'I can't believe that no one told you about that, or at least that it hasn't come up just in conversation or something. It would've been obvious before, when she used to get the brain attacks with it, 'cause those were really scary, and to miss them I'd say that you'd have to be blind, but Iggy definitely noticed them so you'd have to be even more than blind an-…' Her voice trailed off as I gave her a 'this-is-all-highly-amusing-I'm-sure-but-can-we-get-back-to-business-now?' look. She sent a small, sheepish smile back at me, and I grinned at her.

'It's been a while since I've had to do that. Nice one, Nudge.' I turned back to the others, who looked a little taken aback at the blur of information they'd just received. 'So, yes. I have a voice that speaks to me sometimes. Y'know, in my head. It tells me stuff every now and again about what we need to do next.' I decided to leave out the comments about my love life. 'It's been around for about a year, and like Nudge said I used to get pretty bad headaches when it first started up. But those have stopped now, and… Yeah,' I finished awkwardly, not quite knowing what else to say.

'You have a voice in your head?' Kate asked, her eyes narrowed slightly as she processed what I'd just told them.

'Yeah.'

Holden muttered under his breath.

'Cool.' Then, in a louder voice when Star turned to him with one eyebrow raised: 'What? It's kinda cool!'

She shook her head at him despairingly and looked at me.

'And this voice told you that we need to go to the School now?'

I stood up and paced my way across on side of the kitchen; suddenly my feet didn't feel like staying still.

'Not exactly. It's never very direct in what it says-' Fang snorted a little at that. '-but it showed me a bunch of pictures and stuff, and it all seems to add up to the School. Plus, it kept telling me that 'history repeats itself'. The School is definitely our history.'

'And it's someone else's history, too.' Dylan's voice sounded out surprisingly close, and I turned out of my pacing to see that he'd gotten up too and was standing just a couple of feet in front of me. He took one of my hands and I could feel my face growing hot, could feel everyone's gazes on us. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Fang shift just slightly in his seat.

'Max, Jeb used to work there, didn't he? Are you thinking that might be where he and your mom went?'

I took a deep breath in because, yes, that was exactly what I'd been thinking. Not for the first time, I wondered if Dylan had been fitted with some kind of telepathic doohickey.

'Perhaps,' I said, keeping my face as straight as possible. 'It's a factor. But I'd be saying we should go even if I didn't think they could be there.'

He looked my dead in the eyes, and as always his expression was easy to read; his forehead was creased slightly, and I could tell that he was concerned. Concerned about _me_.

'You're sure you want to do this?' he asked me, his voice deliberate, the way a parent might talk if they were trying to convince their child not to jump off the top of the jungle gym, knowing that it would likely end in a crying kid and a good mess.

I swallowed. Dylan had heard the stories about the School, knew how much it had affected all of us. He knew what we'd be going back to.

Then again, he also knew not to talk to me like a child.

I pulled away from him, moving back towards the table to address the group as a whole.

'Look, this isn't about _wanting_ to do anything. But we need a next step and this is the one that makes the most sense. I understand if anyone doesn't want to come; no one's going to force you to pay a visit to an evil scientist clubhouse. I'm going. If you're up for it, come along.'

There was barely a pause before the whole group broke into confirmations that they weren't being left behind. I'm fairly certain I heard some discussion between Iggy and Gazzy about the last explosive stunt they'd pulled in the School's parking lot, but I chose to ignore it; bigger fish and all.

'What's the plan, then?' Holden asked me, then winced slightly and turned to Fang. 'Sorry. I mean, you're still kind of our leader and all, and…'

Ratchet laughed loudly.

'Man, loosen up. I'm sure the guy didn't take it too hard. It's pretty clear who wears the pants around here.'

The corner of Fang's mouth quirked slightly, and when he looked at me there was a gleam of _something_ in his eyes.

'She's the tough one,' he remarked.

I narrowed my eyes at him, holding back a smile as a scene flitted through my mind; a tall, dark-haired boy leaned against a wall, staring impassively at a sandy-haired man sporting a white coat and a thick German accent:

'_Is dere anysing special about you? Anysing vorth saving?'_

'_Besides my fashion sense? I play a mean harmonica.'_

Oh boy, this was gonna be a fun trip.

'Can I make an observation?' asked Iggy, sniggering slightly at his own choice of words before sobering up. 'How exactly are we planning on getting there? Four of us don't have wings, and that last I knew we weren't packing anything with a combustible engine. Seems like finding a mode of transport should be the first part of any plan there might be.'

'We've got a van,' Kate said. 'It's a bit beat up and probably about fourth-hand, but it works. We left it about a mile away from here.'

I looked at her questioningly and she shrugged.

'Thought it would be best to hide it. So it's sitting on an old dirt track a little way into the woods over there.' She jerked a thumb towards the front of the house.

'Well… Great,' I said; when you've gotten used to everything having that extra twist to it, making it that much harder, it can come as a surprise when something's actually easy for once. 'So that's transport sorted. It's not going to be a relaxing journey. It'll be long – a couple of days or so – but we'll be resting up when we can; no point getting there and being so tired out that we can't _do_ anything. Those of us with wings will fly overhead of the van and keep watch in front for any changes in the road. Any questions?'

'Actually, yeah, now that you ask,' drawled Star. 'What exactly are we going to do once we're there?'

There was silence. My mind worked furiously, thinking through everything that I knew about the School, everything I'd heard, everything the Voice had shown me.

'A few things,' I said, injecting confidence into my voice. 'First off, we're going to scout out the area, find out what's happening there that made it so important we go. We'll work out how the School's connected to the Doomsday Group and all that One Light rubbish. The Voice showed me something about alterations before and after birth – they could be connected to Generation 77. Maybe we'll find my mom and Jeb along the way. I don't know. But with any luck, we're taking the School down.'

'About time,' muttered Gazzy.

'And there's one more thing,' I said, frowning as I thought back. 'There was something about a referee.'

'Like an umpire, like they have in sports?' Nudge asked. 'Why would evil scientists be playing spor-'

'No, Nudge, not like a sports referee. It sounded like this was some sort of trial or measuring scale they use as a point of reference for all the experiments they churn out. It said that each subject was 'tested against the Referee to determine value'. So clearly that's something that's important to them; they use it to decide what they're going to do with everything they create. If we can take it from them – steal it or break or something – then that could be a huge setback in whatever their twisted little schemes are.'

My words were met with nods, some more enthusiastic than others, and I felt a swooping in my stomach at the thought of getting out of the house and flying, willingly, right back into danger again. I was nervous, worried, and yes, even scared, but at the same time I felt kind of… Excited. This was what I was comfortable with. Dealing with emotions and depressed zombie flocks and living quietly? That was difficult. Making plans to infiltrate and destroy a top-secret psycho playpen? That was something I could do.

'Basically, the plan is get in, find out what's going on, and knock the place down,' summarised Fang.

I rolled my eyes and huffed irritably as some of the others laughed.

'Always the way with words,' I muttered. Then I spoke louder so that everyone could hear me:

'Alright everybody. Let's dance.'

'Please don't, Max,' Gazzy sniggered, then his voice dropped to a stage whisper. 'It's not a pretty sight.'

**A/N Don't forget to review! Reviews make me happy. :D**


	9. Chapter 8

**A/N Okay, I'm gonna ask something of you guys. Basically, I generally write each chapter over the course of a few hours between about midnight and three in the morning. Which means that once I've finished I'm not really in the mood to proofread, so I tend to just post straight off the bat. Now, usually I'm anal enough about errors to notice if I've made any as I'm writing, but sometimes I miss them, so if you pick up on any mistakes (particularly if I've messed up and used a British word that no American in their right mind would ever say) then do let me know. :P**

Being back in the sky felt awesome. I mean, I'd gone flying with Dylan over the last week, but that had just been aimless, flying for the sake of it. Which is cool and all, but it's like the difference between a normal person going for a walk about on any old day and then deciding to actually go somewhere specific; having a purpose made the flying feel like it had more of a meaning, and there was an incredible exhilaration that came with that. For a while, at least, all I had to think about was the journey. I didn't have to worry about what we were going to do when we got there, or how long we could go before having to stop for food, or the fact that we'd left Total in charge of the house – I just had to fly.

The flock was spread out in no particular formation, floating around as they found different air currents and weaved back and forth along their course. Nudge and Gazzy were definitely looking more and more like themselves again as the journey went by, and Iggy seemed a lot calmer than he had been now that he had something to focus on. The small shape of the gang's van moved steadily along the snaking road below us, and Fang flew a little ahead so that he could stay in their sights, watching for any problems further along the track. I tilted my face up into the wind, almost expecting to see Angel winding through the sky over my head, dipping her hands down into clouds as we passed and making polite one-sided conversation with any birds that went by.

I sighed and closed my eyes briefly, trying to breathe out the ache that seemed to be pooling in my chest. But thinking about Angel led me to think about Ella, another person I'd managed to lose; could she fly now? Had she had wings grafted onto her back? Was she flying at this very moment, wheeling through the sky and wondering why she hadn't given herself up before? Or had the whitecoats messed up the grafting with her just like they did with Ari? Had she been fitted with awkward, painful wings which had trouble flying straight? Or maybe she didn't have wings at all; maybe they'd turned her into one of the mindless drones of the One Light we'd seen in Paris. Maybe they'd locked her in a dog crate and were performing awful tests on her. Maybe she was dead.

I shook my head sharply and forced those thoughts to the back of my head, where hopefully they'd stop kicking me between the eyes for a bit.

'Are you alright?' Dylan asked from beside me, his voice stifled a little by the wind rushing in my ears. I glanced sideways at him.

'I'm fine.'

He flew in closer.

'You didn't look fine.'

I resisted the urge to growl in annoyance.

'I said that _I'm fine_.'

Suddenly he wheeled around in front of me, adjusting his wing strokes so that he could fly backwards. Despite the fact that he obviously wasn't happy about something, a small part of me was impressed; let's not forget that the guy hadn't even been able to fly forwards not too long ago.

'What is wrong with you?' His voice was angry and his face wasn't looking any cheerier. I felt my hands tighten into fists.

'Okay, you wanna talk? Let's talk,' I said, grabbing his arm and pulling him a little way out, further from the rest of the flock. Then I dropped my grip on him, twisting to watch him as we flew.

'You're asking what's _wrong_ with me?'

'Yes. Yes, I am. You know, ever since Fang showed up you've been holding me at arm's length. After everything he did to you, after everything _I_ did _for_ you…'

'Well jeez, sorry Dylan, I didn't realise I owed you my full attention every minute of the day!' I spat.

'That's not what I'm asking you for! But you were having feelings for me, don't pretend you weren't, and then the gang turns up on our doorstep and suddenly you won't even talk to me properly.'

I scoffed.

'Who are you to say that I was having feelings for you? I'm pretty certain that's my call to be making, thanks. And you know what? I'm not sure that I was. Maybe I just liked having someone there; someone I could talk to about stuff and someone I didn't have to be strong around all the time. So what if I liked that? Everyone likes that, everyone _needs_ that. But it does _not_ mean that I had feelings for you!'

'So what, you just thought you'd lead me on?' This was the most riled I'd ever seen Dylan before. I felt like screaming in frustration.

'I didn't lead you on! God, the number of times I told you that you were just programmed to love me, that it wasn't real. The number of times I tried to put you at a distance and you wouldn't take it. How the hell was that _leading you on_?'

He opened his mouth to retort, but our argument was interrupted by Fang's shout.

'Problem.' I turned to see him dropping down towards the van below, signalling to Kate, who was driving, to watch out ahead. I peered forwards, pulling a face when I saw what Fang had seen.

'Ah. Yes, that could be a problem.'

* * *

You know the huge rocky ridges you get alongside those massively long rural roads? The ones that come about when the person making the road thinks 'hey look, a mountain; maybe I'll just plough straight through it'? They're cool-looking and all, but when whatever's holding them in place gives way and boulders spill out across the road effectively blocking you way, they become decidedly less cool-looking and decidedly more inconvenient.

'No way the van's getting over that,' Gazzy commented helpfully as we all stood staring at the pile of rocks that had been spewed across our track. I pressed my lips together tightly; we'd been on the move for about four and a half hours, and it had only just started getting light. Clearly this had happened during the night and no one else had been along this way since.

'No duh,' said Ratchet. 'Whadda we do now?'

'Start clearing?' Nudge suggested. She didn't seem thrilled about the idea, and looked relieved when I shook my head.

'It would take us ages.'

'We could blow it up,' Iggy said, his face looking worryingly cheerful about the prospect.

'With what?' I asked, my eyes narrowed. 'You didn't bring anything along with you.' Silence. 'Right?' More silence. 'Right?'

'Explosives won't work,' Dylan cut in, surveying the rockslide with a calculating look on his face. 'The part of the ridge that's still intact isn't stable enough to withstand a blast. If you did that then the whole thing could come down on top of us.'

We all stared at our latest obstacle, trying to think of a way to get around it.

'Ooh! How about this?' said Nudge squealed suddenly, earning a scowl from Ratchet when the noise made him wince. 'We can't move the rocks, so maybe we can move the van! If we could all get around it, we could lift it up and fly it over.'

I frowned at the van.

'Perhaps,' I mused. 'It'll be tricky lifting it straight up off a cold start, though.'

'Kate could do it,' Star announced.

I turned to look at Kate.

'What do you think?'

A crease appeared between her eyebrows.

'I could lift it, no problem. But I wouldn't fancy my chances of balancing it across those boulders.'

'We wouldn't need you to carry it over. Just get it up off the ground and help give it the upwards momentum we need to get it airborne.'

She grinned.

'Now _that_ I can manage.'

I clapped my hands.

'Right then, everyone with wings: in the sky. We're all going to position ourselves around the van. Grab hold wherever you can-'

'If we wind down the windows then you'll have something to hold onto,' Holden called out.

'Brilliant. So we're going to get a good grip on the van, then on three Kate's gonna boost it up for us. When she does, everyone _pull_ _up_ hard with your arms and _push down _hard with your wings.' I paused and thought for a second, then added, 'And everyone on the ground get out of the way asap, just in case.'

My last comment was met with a bunch of unamused faces. I shrugged.

'Precautionary measure. Okay guys, asses in the air.'

They did as I'd said, gathering around the vehicle and grabbing a handful of metal. Kate crouched low on the shotgun side, placing her hands a good meter or so apart on the underside of the van.

'On three,' I called.

'Max?' Gazzy peered at me from the across the roof. 'Do you mean actually on three this time?'

I chuckled. For those of you who haven't been keeping up, a lot of the time when we were on the run from Erasers the words 'on three' tended to mean more 'right now'.

'Yeah, Gaz, actually on three. Ready, everyone? One, two, three!'

With what looked like no effort whatsoever, Kate hefted the van over her head. At the same time, all of us pushed down hard with our wings, and the combined force lifted the van out of Kate's hands and into the air.

The weight was fine. We were all naturally strong to begin with, and if you add years (or in Dylan's case, months) of fighting and running to that, you're talking about some pretty heavy-duty bird kids. So actually holding the van wasn't really a problem. What _did _prove difficult was coordinating our movements so that we could move as a group in the right direction; a task easier thought than done. The thing is that when you put a bunch of kids with an average wingspan of about twelve feet close together in the air, people tend to get whapped over the head a lot if you're not careful. Which is why I'd told the others on the ground to stand back; I guessed it would be a pretty big downer if we all managed to jostle around so much that we lost grip of the van and flattened someone. So we made our slow, ungainly way over the rock pile, cries of 'watch it!' and 'that was my face, you moron!' ringing out as we went. After a close call involving Nudge almost getting her head whacked into the wing mirror, we managed to touchdown on the other side.

'Good job, guys,' I said, leaning against the van and patting the hood as we watched the grounded folk picking their way across the rocks. 'And great work, Kate!' I called to her. She jumped down from the nearest boulder, looking pleased.

'It was no problem.'

With that, the more aeronautically-challenged members of the group climbed back into the van, setting off along the road as the rest of us took to the air. Flying away from the rockslide, I glanced back for a moment; our first obstacle had been passed. I wondered what else we'd come up against on the road ahead.

Dramatic, huh? But yeah, we hadn't even reached the Oregon-California border yet. Still mucho fun to be had by all.

**A/N Let me know what you think!**


	10. Chapter 9

**A/N I reckon that Fang's gang doesn't really get enough face-time, so here's a chapter focussing on them. Yay!**

The van complained loudly as Kate shifted gears. She stamped down on the clutch pedal and felt some resistance on the stick before it slid into place and the grinding sound stopped.

'Hey, Katie, take it easy!' Ratchet grumbled from the back of the van.

'For the hundredth time, Ratchet, my name is Kate, not Katie,' she replied, her eyes fixed on the road ahead. 'And why on earth did we have to steal a stick shift? I've only ever tried driving one a couple of times before.'

'Well, you know how they say that guys like a girl who can drive a good stick shift.' It was said with a snigger, and Kate looked up sharply into the rear-view mirror just in time to see an empty soda can hitting Ratchet in the side of the head.

'Keep your disgusting thoughts to yourself, ingrate,' Star sneered. She had spent most of the journey so far sprawled across the three seats in the middle section of the van, seemingly unworried about seatbelts and the like. Around her were steadily-growing piles of empty food wrappers and drink cans, which she was clearly finding a good use for as she continued to chuck trash at Ratchet over the backs of the seats.

'Hey, hey, hey, it was a joke!' he protested, his hands held up in front of his face in an attempt to protect himself from the lightning-fast volleys of garbage. 'Didn't mean to offend your sensitive Catholic school ears!'

After a minute or two Star appeared to get bored of her latest game, retreating back to lounging across the car seats, and it wasn't too long before she started snoring. Ratchet groaned under his breath.

'Snores like a freakin' machine gun,' he muttered, clamping down on his headphones with both hands and twisting himself around to face the loading doors at the back of the van, and in the momentary near-silence that followed, Kate was able to turn her full attention back on the road again.

'Quality entertainment,' Holden remarked from the seat next to her, his voice quietly amused. She shot him a quick glance and laughed a little at the expression on his face.

'Yeah, it's like a mobile comedy show following us around. Wish they'd give it a rest sometimes, though.'

'Not my fault,' interjected Ratchet from behind them.

Kate shook her head, rolling her eyes in teasing exasperation.

'If you don't mind me asking, how exactly did you and Star ever become friends?' Holden said mildly. 'It doesn't seem as though it should work. It's never looked as though you've got a lot in common.'

Kate sighed.

'We don't really. And before we were taken I don't think we'd ever spoken more than a few words to each other. But she helped me a lot while we were in that lab, getting tested on and altered and stuff; I wasn't exactly born with that fighting edge, so before I learned to harden up I was pretty vulnerable in there. She was there for me. She spoke to me from her cage when I was having panic attacks, and she was the one who told me to get a grip whenever she thought I was giving up. There was this one time when some scientists came to take each of us for testing. They got us out of our cages and walked us down the hall together, then when they tried to take us down different corridors Star went crazy. She fought them so hard that they had to sedate her in the end – kept saying that she wasn't going to let them take me out of her sight. We've been through a lot together, and I can pretty much guarantee that if she hadn't been there with me I would never have survived. I know she puts up this front of being kinda cold and stuff, but she's a good person.'

Holden nodded.

'I get that.' He paused for a second, then spoke again, his voice more tentative this time. 'Did it change the way you think? I mean, you were at Catholic school, right? Did it change the things you believed in?'

'I was never particularly religious or anything, actually. My parents sent me there because it scored well on rankings and stuff, not because it was Catholic. I mean…' She searched for the right way to word what she was feeling. 'I guess I believe in _something_, like something that's bigger than just us and the world and all, but I'm not entirely sure what it is. I get what you mean, though; going through the sort of stuff that we've experienced changes the way you look at things.' She glanced at Holden again, watching for a moment as he mulled over her words.

'I think that anything I might have thought before about higher powers or whatever was smashed when I was taken,' he said suddenly. He stared at the glove compartment, his eyes distant, and rubbed absently at the meshwork of scars that made his arms look like they were covered in thick, pink webs. 'I guess I thought that anyone who was evil enough to let that happen couldn't be in charge of everything. I think that if I'd let myself believe that they _could_ then I would've just given up; it wouldn't have seemed worth fighting.'

He fell silent, and Kate felt a pang as she took in what he'd said. In a lot of ways, he reminded her of her older brother. They looked completely different, of course, but the way Holden spoke, so steadily and unashamedly, was very similar to the way Jamie used to speak.

Her grip on the steering wheel tightened as she thought about her brother, and before she realised what she was doing the top third of the wheel had buckled, leaving a very crooked circle of metal in her hands.

'Great,' she muttered, giving the wheel a slight turn to check that the steering was still working properly.

'You okay?' Holden asked, eyeing the bent metal beneath Kate's fingers.

'Yeah, I'm alright,' she replied with an airy laugh, her voice sounding much calmer than she felt. 'I was just thinking too hard.'

He nodded and went back to watching the trees flying past the window.

Kate remembered the day that Jamie had left all too clearly, saying goodbye at the train station three years ago. His military uniform smelled like the same detergent that their mum had used since forever, and she couldn't stop the tears from welling up and spilling onto it as he hugged her.

'Hey, don't be crying now,' he'd said. 'We'll send letters and talk on the phone when we can and everything. It'll be just like I've gone away to college.'

She couldn't bring herself to say what she knew everyone was thinking: _but what if you don't come back? _Instead, she gripped him tighter and said,

'I'll miss you.'

He dropped a kiss on the top of her head, having to bend down low to reach; at 6'1'', a full-grown man of eighteen, he'd towered over Kate's twelve-year-old self.

'I'll miss you too, Katie.'

He always called her Katie.

He hadn't left her mind since she'd watched him walk away through the doors to the platform. Not really. It had gotten easier to deal with him not being at home as time went on, and he'd come back for a couple of weeks last year, but the fear that his last letter really would be his last was something she'd never gotten used to. And now that she wasn't at home anymore things were even worse – had he heard when she'd been kidnapped? Did he know about what had been done to her? Had he died since she'd run away to join the gang?

She breathed in deeply, trying to calm herself down and keep the fear from taking her over. _We've all got our causes, _she told herself. _His is the military. This is mine. We're both fighting for something important._

A sign appeared on the road ahead, letting Kate know that a place called Lakeview was coming up in five miles. They were now only about a half hour away from the Californian border; she'd been driving through the night for nearly five and a half hours now, not counting the time they'd spent getting over that rock pile, and she was exhausted from the all concentration that it was taking to make sure they didn't swerve off the road.

'Maybe we'll be able stop for a bit at this next town coming up,' she said, glancing at the clock on the dashboard. 'It's twenty past six now. If we stop and rest for a few hours then by the time that we're ready to go again there'll be some shops open and we can restock.'

'Sounds like a plan, Katie,' Ratchet mumbled sleepily.

Her mouth tightened at the corners.

'Don't call me Katie,' she said quietly.

They drove on, and when another sign came up showing that they were only a couple of miles outside of Lakeview, Kate started to think about how they could let the others above them know about the plan to stop. Maybe if she just parked the van then they'd get the message?

But in the end she didn't need to worry about that, because suddenly she was thrown against the window as something rammed into the side of the van.

* * *

They were pushed off the road, the vehicle rolling right over with the force of the hit. Kate could hear shouts from all directions, could feel her head spinning as the world rotated around her, could feel her seatbelt cutting into her neck and across her stomach as it held her upside down in her seat as they turned; a large shape flew over her head, falling on top of her as the van lurched, and she realised it was Star. Reaching out, Kate pinned her friend to the dash, holding her in place and for a fraction of a moment feeling grateful towards the scientists who had decided they were going to give her superhuman strength. Then the van came to a stop with a jolt that sent her head whipping sideways into the window.

There was a creaking sound as the body of the vehicle settled around them, the dents in the metal groaning and shards of glass making tinkling sounds as they fell from broken window frames. Looking to her left, all Kate could see was dirt; the van had ended up on its side.

'Everyone alive?' Holden called out, suspended sideways in his seat by his own belt.

'Yeah,' replied Kate. 'Few cuts from the glass and managed to crack my head against the window, but I'm alright.

'I'm cool.' Ratchet's voice was slightly muffled; his hearing had given him a split-second's notice about what was going to happen, not long enough to get out a sound of warning, but enough time throw himself down onto the floor of the van. When they'd started rolling, he'd braced himself between the bases of the seats and held on with everything he had. Star, who had been asleep and slumped across three seats, had not had such a lucky time of it; she'd been flung forwards on impact. Her almost instant reactions had allowed her to grab hold of the back of Kate's seat with one hand as she passed, preventing her from flying through the front windshield, but the momentum had sent enough force through her arm to twist it out of its socket.

'Shoulder's hurt,' she said, the blood from her nose bright red against her white face and her voice thick and strained. 'Elbow got pulled and bashed my nose pretty hard. But mostly the shoulder.'

'What _was _that?' Kate asked.

Ratchet opened his mouth to answer her, but before he could a huge, fanged face appeared in the windshield. The Eraser tilted its head to look at them, a brutal relish in its yellow eyes.

'Well, well, well, children,' he growled. 'This is why you always wear a seatbelt.'

**A/N Writing this is helping me learn geography - I like to know where characters are going, and if I'm ever writing a journey then travel times and locations and stuff need to be realistic or it annoys me. Seriously, you have no idea how long I spent hovering over Oregon and California on Google maps trying to work out what route the group was gonna take. And jeez, you Americans have bloody big spaces where there is NOTHING going on. Seriously, roads should not be that long and empty. :P Review!**


	11. Chapter 10

**A/N Ha, remembering that the side of the van was the floor and stuff proved tricky here - upturned vans are clearly not the place to be holding fights to the death. :P Also, I kind of get the feeling there may be a few typos in there, 'cause my typing wasn't looking too snazzy tonight... Ah well, hopefully there aren't too many. Enjoy!**

Kate had experienced fear before - it kind of came as a package deal along with the experiments and mutant superpowers - so the surge of terror-induced adrenaline that flooded through her at the sight of the Eraser was all too familiar. She lay against the side of the van that had become their floor, still the only thing supporting Star, whose legs were limp, against the dash. Her mind raced as she tried to work out how on earth her friend was going to be able to fight, but before she could come to any kind of solution, there was a terrible screaming sound as the metal loading doors at the back end were literally ripped apart by massive clawed paws.

As one Eraser entered from that side and was met by Ratchet, the first one started to reach through the partially-shattered windshield, tearing at Holden's clothes and trying to drag him out of the van. There was a bang, and a dent appeared in the wall above them as an Eraser leapt onto the top of the overturned vehicle, and more mutated hands came grasping through the empty window frame on Holden's right. In the back of Kate's mind she had the thought that it looked a little bit like those scenes you saw in zombie movies, where the main character had been caught on a deserted road by an army of rotting corpses, all of them pushing their hands through every gap they could find.

'Star, you need to twist your legs around so that you can get your feet down and support yourself when I let you go,' Kate said quickly.

'On it,' grunted Star, sucking a breath in through her teeth as she moved. Once she was stable, Kate released her and tried to undo her own seatbelt; the plastic coating had been split, revealing a bent metal clasp inside which wouldn't come undone when she pushed at the cracked button. With a growl of frustration, she grabbed hold of the belt and tugged, ripping the fabric clean off the buckle and allowing herself to slip off the seat and onto the "floor". Reaching up, she gripped the arms of the first Eraser, pulling them away from Holden and down across the sharp edges of the broken windshield. Howling in pain, the Eraser withdrew itself from the van, and with one threat removed, Holden was able to twist in his seat and aim a kick through the upwards-facing side window right into his second attacker's face. There was another bang, louder this time, as the full weight of the wolf-man fell backwards along the side of the van, the dent he'd made previously become decidedly larger. Holden undid his seatbelt, but instead of dropping down next to Star and Kate he reached up and grabbed hold of the window frame, shards of glass creating small, instantly-healing cuts on his palms as he pulled himself up and out of the van.

Behind the girls, Ratchet was now dealing with two Erasers, more pushing in after them, eager to have their turn. Within the confines of the vehicle he seemed to have the upper hand, being smaller than the Erasers and only having to crouch a bit in order to stand without hitting his head on the bent roof, but Kate knew it wouldn't be too long before the power of the beasts he was fighting would take the advantage and pull him out of the van into the waiting pack.

'Star, are you-?'

'Go.'

Moving forwards, Kate launched herself at the overly-enthusiastic beasts, releasing powerful punches into snouts and stomachs which sent her enemies flying backwards into the snarling mob. She could hear thudding and shouting above her as Holden fought on what was now the roof. Then the surface she was standing on began to tip; the Erasers were pushing the van, trying to turn it over again in an attempt to throw Holden onto the ground and send the rest of them tumbling around in the metal box a second time.

'Out!' she shouted, ploughing forwards with her arms spread wide, knocking the attacking monsters backwards as Ratchet and Star appeared alongside her. Now outside, she could count eleven Erasers pushing to get past the ones that had already been taken out. A crash behind her told her that the van had indeed been tipped back onto its wheels, and she risked a look behind her to check that Holden was alright; he was on the ground now, busy fighting three Erasers at once. In the sky above them, dozens of hulking shapes flew through the air, the smaller forms of the flock scattered among them and locked in battle.

A sudden blow in the middle of her chest threw Kate backwards, knocking all the air out of her and leaving her gasping on the ground. As she tried to catch her breath, claws wrapped around her waist and she was lifted into the air; the Eraser started to fly higher, clearly intending to drop her once they were up far enough for the fall to be fatal. Reaching a hand around behind her back, Kate found one of the arms holding her, then tightened her grip around the thick wrist as hard as she could. She felt the bones crunch as they were crushed under her fingers, and then she was falling down through the air, falling from a good fifteen feet up – not necessarily a lethal height, but enough to cause some serious damage. Before she had time to make a sound, though, another pair of hands – human this time – gripped her under the shoulders and lowered her to the ground.

'That's not really the best move when you don't have wings, huh?' Nudge laughed, before launching herself back up to the sky-bound part of the fight.

'Thanks!' Kate called as she threw a kick at the nearest Eraser, sending him flying back against the battered remains of the van; the impact on the already-weakened surface caused the dents in the vehicle to buckle completely, and the wolf-man crashed right through the metal and plastic to end up slumped across the back row of seats.

Just to the right of the wrecked automobile, Star was fending off two attackers. Holding her injured arm against her body with the opposite hand, she was only able to defend herself with lightning-fast kicks, which probably would have been enough if her face hadn't been drawn in pain and her balance hadn't been thrown due to not having any easy movement in her upper body. Two more Erasers ran at Kate from either side; she struck out at the first one to reach her, its head whipping to the side with the force of her blow, then as the second one approached she grabbed it by the arm. Spinning hard, she dragged the Eraser off the ground behind her and hurled it towards the two that Star was fighting. Her aim was good, and the three creatures landed in a bulky heap.

'Cheers,' gasped Star, looking almost ready to pass out as she walked towards her friend.

Free of attackers for a moment, Kate turned to see how the boys were faring; they'd moved together, fighting a group of six Erasers between them. A large black shape fell from the sky and crashed into the ground, narrowly missing Ratchet, who sent a brief scowl upwards.

'Watch it!' he shouted. 'We're fighting down here!'

* * *

Would it be bad if I said I was kinda thrilled to be beating the heck out of Erasers again? These guys were the first major enemy we'd ever come up against, and to me there'd always be something just slightly comforting about kicking some furry asses. That doesn't sound _too_ weird, right?

I threw myself into a spin, kicking out as I turned and catching the Eraser in front of me across the face. He rolled away, quickly regaining his balance and zipping back in my direction; I had to admit, evil kudos were due to whoever had worked out the old flying-related kinks in this latest batch. But before he could reach me, he was pushed aside by a bigger Eraser, one that looked horribly familiar.

'Didn't I knock you out of the sky already?' It was Ari's face jeering at me, his voice growling, but the thing in front of me was _not _my little brother.

'You're not the only clone around, pups,' I snarled. 'Meet the original Max.'

He bared his teeth in a vicious grin.

'It's gonna be fun taking you down again.'

Then he flung himself towards me. He was faster than I'd expected and his claws caught my arm as I spun away from him; I heard my sleeve rip and felt a sharp pain across my shoulder. Turning to face him, I snapped a kick up to hit him under the chin, but he grabbed my foot as it came up and twisted hard, trying to wrench my ankle out of place. Going with the force, I did a kind of log roll in mid-air, then brought my free foot round to meet the side of his head. The momentum forced his back to me, and I flew forwards to get in a good hard punch at the spot where his wings joined his back, causing him to drop a few feet. Rocketing back up, fake-lame-Ari snapped his jaws at my feet, and once again I was just a tad too slow on the uptake; I put on a burst of speed to dodge him, but his teeth still grazed my leg. I felt rivulets of blood running down my shin, but blocked out the smarting.

_Max can't get to the phone right now, please leave a message after the tone. BEEP! Um, hi, Max, this is pain again… I guess you've stopped taking my calls, huh?_

Damn straight.

Zooming upwards, I looked back to see Ari Mark II following me a few feet below. Now, just so you know, my next move was awesome even for me: spinning like I was on a freakin' dime, I was suddenly facing downwards aiming a two-fisted hit at the overgrown terrier's upturned face. There was a crack as I made contact, blood spraying out of his nose, and he went plummeting backwards, only managing to catch himself about ten feet off the ground. He made a move to launch himself back towards me, but suddenly the head of every Eraser around us snapped up, like a dog listening to a far off whistle. Then they were on the move, racing away from us, the ones on the ground taking off and joining the rest of their pack in the sky to speed off southwards.

Clone-Ari's face screwed up as he scowled, looking up at me as he started to follow the others.

'Next time,' he growled, and then he was gone.

Thoroughly nonplussed, I glanced around at the rest of the flock left hanging in the sky around me.

'Anyone?' I asked.

'Not a clue,' Iggy replied, shaking his head.

We dropped down to join the rest of the group on the ground, and did an inventory of our newest injuries. There were numerous scratches, cuts, bruises, a few busted noses, but on the whole everyone seemed to be okay. Aside from his ruffled hair and dusty clothes, Holden barely looked as though he'd been in a fight at all. But Star was not in good shape; her face was scarily pale and there was a bulge at her shoulder where the bone was sitting outside the socket. I'd had a dislocated shoulder twice in my life, and let me tell you that it was not something that I wanted to repeat – those things hurt like hell, and I was seriously impressed that Star had managed to get through a fight in that condition. However, fixing a dislocation tended to be just as painful as dislocating it in the first place, and there was no way we'd be able to take her to a hospital (aside from anything else, we were stuck in rural Oregon with a wrecked van and no cell phone reception).

'Star, we've got to get your bone back into the socket before the muscles spasm too much,' I said. 'Do you know how that's done?'

Even through her pain she managed to glare at me.

'I've seen those medical documentaries.' She spoke through tightly gritted teeth. 'I know how it works.'

'Um, awesome. So shall we-?'

'Kate can do it,' she said. 'Stronger is better. Faster.'

I looked uncertainly over at Kate who sat on Star's other side. She met my gaze, her eyes wide at Star's words.

'Do you know ho-... Can you do it?' I asked. 'You don't have to; one of us can if you don't feel like you could.'

She shook her head.

'No. I know how. If Star wants me to do it, then I'll do it.'

Laying Star on her back on the ground, I positioned myself on her right side, away from her injured shoulder. I reached across her to hold her in place, my hands gripping her at the waist and the side of the neck. Kate sat on Star's other side, her foot placed on the side of the girl's ribcage, just above my hand. Her hands held the injured arm, laid straight out at right angles to Star's body.

'Okay,' Kate said, taking a deep breath. 'You ready?'

Star nodded once, her eyes closed and jaw clenched.

Looking up at the group standing around us, then down at me, Kate breathed in a second time.

'Right. On three. One, two, _three_.'

She gave a sharp tug on Star's arm, pulling it straight outwards against the opposing force provided by my hands and Kate's own foot. A clunking kind of snap sounded as the bone slid back into its socket, and Star gave a roar of pain. Thankfully, the whole thing was over within a couple of seconds; Star had been right when she'd said that Kate's strength would get it done faster. Jeb had told me once that if you didn't apply enough force to the arm then the bone didn't have the room to shift position and slide back in, instead staying wedged outside the socket. Ouch.

The _good_ thing about dislocations is that, once the joint's back in place, you start to feel better pretty much instantly. It would be a while before Star would get full function and mobility back, which wasn't ideal considering our destination, but she'd already started to get some colour back in her face. We fashioned a sling for her to use out of a spare shirt belonging to Ratchet (something he didn't seem particularly thrilled about), and by the time she was strapped up, she was back to making sarcastic comments and complaining that she hadn't eaten anything in a whole half hour; it seemed like she was gonna be okay. In not too long, we were able to patch the rest of our various battle wounds up, and soon we were all pretty much back in working order.

The van was a different story – it was completely wrecked, with shattered windows and ragged tears in the plating of both the back and side walls.

'Well, we're not going anywhere in _that_,' Ratchet remarked, ever the helpful commentator.

'There's a town ahead,' Fang said, jerking his head back at the sign a few yards along the road. 'We'll find another ride there.'

'Lakeview,' Kate agreed, nodding. 'About two miles from here.'

I looked to the east, where the sun had pretty much risen completely above the horizon.

'Alright guys,' I sighed. 'Start walking.'

**A/N This was the longest chapter I've done so far, and I'm sincerely hoping it didn't show too much that I find action scenes really difficult to write. Don't forget to review, folks!**


	12. Chapter 11

**A/N Couldn't post this last night because the Wi-Fi wasn't on, so here it is now! Had to tweak a few of the details about Lakeview to make them fit in with what I had planned, so apologies if there happen to be any die-hard Lakeviewers out there who are extremely offended by that.**

It took us a good forty-five minutes to reach Lakeview, so by the time we arrived the town was really starting to get up and about with its day. I don't know how many of you have stolen a car before, but I'll have you know that it's not particularly at its easiest when everyone's on the streets on their way to work and whatnot. The morning rush also meant that we got a lot of strange looks from passersby; it's a pretty small place and I would guess that the folk who live there aren't all that used to seeing a group of unfamiliar, beat-up kids coming down the sidewalk. Thankfully it didn't seem like anyone identified us from our exploits on the news, but I still felt antsy, expecting a shout of recognition at any moment. The only good thing about us having been delayed so much was that it meant some of the shops in town were actually open when we got there. Our first stop was a small coffee shop. There, we collapsed into some chairs, taking up about half the tables in the place. We were silent or pretty much the whole of the next quarter hour; we'd been travelling since just after midnight, having been up for the full day before, and it was now coming up to eight in the morning. No one felt like talking.

After a while, I took a look around at the group and noticed that Star was looking in fairly bad shape again; her shoulder was still strapped up nicely, and she didn't seem to be in any pain, so for a moment I couldn't work out what was wrong. Then I realised that, putting her fairly constant complaining about food aside, she really did have a wicked fast metabolism, and not having eaten after fighting the Erasers probably meant that she was experiencing a pretty massive sugar low at the moment. I stood up, moving over to the counter and digging in my pocket for some change.

'What can I get for you?' asked the server, looking way too perky for my liking.

'One hot chocolate, please. Biggest you've got,' I replied.

'And are you wanting any extra shots in that?'

I frowned, scanning the board behind the counter.

'Um… Okay, basically, my friend's on a sugar low. You got anything good for that?'

She considered the question for a second, then shrugged.

'The hot chocolate should help. I could add a shot of espresso for an extra twenty-five cents if you want? Might not taste brilliant, but it'll give her a boost.'

'Uh, sure.'

'That'll just take a couple of minutes.'

I waited by the counter for the drink, paid, and made my way back to the table, plonking the cup down in front of Star.

She looked up at me, and her eyes seemed distant. I was suddenly aware that she hadn't been complaining about lack of food for the last half hour or so, which spoke volumes for how exhausted she must have been feeling.

'Drink,' I said, leaving no room for argument.

Gazzy looked outraged.

'Hey! How come we-?'

I cut him off with a look, jerking my head towards Star. He took in her appearance, nodding when he understood what I meant.

Star grabbed the cup, her hand shaking just a little, and downed half the drink in one go. It must have burned like nobody's business, but she didn't seem to feel it; her only reaction was to scowl at the mug as if it had insulted her, and then grimace up at me.

'That tastes like crap.'

* * *

Ten minutes later we decided it was time to get going. As we were leaving, I had a thought and ran back to the counter again.

'Can you tell me where the nearest city is going south from here?'

The girl thought for a moment.

'There's Redding about two hundred miles from here. Kind of north central California.'

'Nothing further east?'

'Not in Cali.'

I nodded thanks and turned to leave, but her voice made me look back around.

'Reno's only a little way over the eastern border into Nevada, though. Maybe a four and a half hour drive.'

I nodded again, this time more enthusiastically.

'Great, thanks.'

We left the shop, making our way back through the streets to the supermarket we'd seen a couple of blocks back. There, we stocked up on provisions for the next leg of our journey, leaving with our hands full of plastic bags. In the small parking lot outside, I turned to face the rest of the group.

'Okay, guys,' I said. 'Time for us to find a new ride. I just want to make sure that everyone's okay to stay moving, 'cause I don't really think we'll be wanting to hang around too much after stealing someone's car. Our next stop is about four and a half hours away. Think we can make it?'

Everybody looked beat, but they nodded. We were all used to having to keep on the move, even when it felt like we'd been catching time in an industrial-sized clothes dryer. So we made our way out of the parking lot and along the street, looking for a quieter area where we might not be seen hotwiring some random's car. As we moved along the fence that closed off the supermarket's loading bay from the main street, Dylan spoke up:

'There's a white loading van through there. Not being used, just parked at the back of the store.'

I looked at the fence, trying to see the van for myself, but there weren't any gaps between the slats of wood for me to peer through.

'How do you know that?' Holden asked, clearly thinking along the same lines as me.

Dylan shrugged one shoulder, looking slightly self-conscious.

'Sometimes I can see things. Through other things, through time, in other places… I don't really know how it works. But there's a van on the other side of that fence.'

Ratchet gave a low whistle.

'Cool, man. I get it. I mean, I can see all the pores and the resin canals and junk in those planks. I can see the ants over there-' He pointed to a patch of yellowed grass in front of a house across the road. '-and I can see a mouse running underneath that bush.' He pointed to the top of the hill that stuck up from the other side of the supermarket. I couldn't even see the bush he was talking about. 'But seeing right through shit? That's sick.'

'Okay, so we know what our target is,' I said, bringing the conversation back to the matter at hand. 'Now we just need to reach it.'

Taking a quick glance around, I reached up to grip the top of the fence, bracing my foot against the wood and boosting myself up. Dropping down the other side, I glared at the splinters in my hands. How normal, all-human criminals deal with not having wings, I have no clue.

I moved quickly around the loading bay, sticking to the edges of the space, keeping a constant watch around me for anyone nearby. When I was about halfway around the perimeter of the fence, the door into the back-end of the store opened and two people walked out. Ducking behind a couple of those industrial waste containers, I strained to listen to their conversation.

'So that's everything unloaded?' The sound of van doors opening accompanied the words.

'Yep, all done. Think we can catch a coffee break before we get back to the warehouse?'

'Don't see why not. Our next delivery isn't due to leave until the afternoon.'

Two sets of footsteps echoed across the loading bay, growing quieter as the men headed for the street, leaving the van unlocked behind them. Great, all the easier for me. Risking a look out from behind the containers, I waited until they were out of sight before racing straight across the space between me and the van. Yanking to door open on the driver's side, I threw myself in before closing door behind me; hopefully anyone looking out of a window or something wouldn't see me hunched in front of the dash, unclipping the access cover and pulling stuff out from underneath the steering wheel. After a few minutes of locating the right wires, I eventually managed to get the van started.

Now, the problem with hotwiring a car the way I did it (ie. the quick way you use when you don't want to get caught fiddling around under the hood) is that if you stall, you've got to go through the whole process again. So driving the van out of the loading bay and around to where the rest of the group waited was a fairly tense experience, what with me not being the most, ahem, _accomplished_ driver in the world; the last thing I needed was to stall in the middle of the parking lot and be seen rewiring my stolen vehicle by a bunch of morning shoppers.

But the god of felonies must have been watching over me at that moment, because somehow I managed to get the van out of the bay and around the corner without so much as a sputter from the engine. Pulling up beside the group, I wound the window down and leaned my elbow against the frame.

'You kids in need of a ride?' I joked, getting a bunch of rolling eyes and shaking heads in response. Jumping out of the van, I left the door open for Kate, who pulled a face.

'Can someone else take it this time? I drove for about six hours back there, I could do with a rest from it.'

Ratchet leapt forwards.

'Allow me,' he boomed, climbing up into the driver's seat. 'It's been too long since I've driven outside the law.'

Kate blinked, her face forming a comical, exaggerated expression of fear. I got the feeling she was only half-joking.

Then we were on our way, leaving Lakeview behind as we continued south.

About two hours into the journey, as we flew over what looked like middle of nowhere, Iggy's voice suddenly sounded to my right.

'Damn.'

'What's up?' I asked.

His nose wrinkled.

'I need to pee.'

Gazzy spluttered, and then we were all laughing, the sound trailing out behind us as we carried on through the sky.

* * *

The young man walked through the corridor, his hands playing nervously with his tie as he neared his destination. He'd only been promoted last month, and this would be his first time meeting his boss, the leader of the whole organisation. Terrifying stories had reached him about the General, whispered around the lunch hall, obviously intended to reach him; whenever someone's first encounter was near, everyone seemed to hear about it. He'd heard all sorts of things, some of them more farfetched than others. Then again, working in this place really made you think twice about what was possible; any of the things he'd heard could be true.

When he had been sent to give the latest updates to the General, he'd been given a strict list of instructions: arrive no earlier than two, no later than ten past; don't knock; speak quickly and keep the initial briefing to the point – if she asks for more information afterwards, give it to her; don't hang around.

Reaching the door, he took a deep breath, checked his watch one last time – 14:06 – and pushed it open.

The office was large, and warmer than he'd expected. It was smart, professional, but at the same time very different from the white walls and floors he was used to; the desk was made of a dark wood instead of metal, and a picture of two girls sat next to the high-tech computer in front of the General. A huge screen covered the left-hand wall of the room, showing a satellite-streamed map of the west coast with ten small yellow dots moving slowly southwards.

The General's fingers moved quickly across the keys of the computer, and she didn't bother looking up at him when she spoke.

'Update.' It wasn't a question.

The man cleared his throat, praying he wouldn't stammer.

'The group's obs have shown a positive incline over the last hour, presenting an increase in energy levels after the drop following the confrontation. Subject 77.9 in particular suffered a dramatic fall in glucose levels and heart rate, but a rise was detected beginning at 0755 hours. No other changes of note.'

'Good.'

He let out a quiet sigh of relief, turning towards the door, but was stopped by the General's voice sounding again.

'I would like to stress the importance once again of keeping the Erasers in check.' The man turned around, looking back at the desk. The General's head had lifted, facing him dead on. 'I have not yet concluded why the subjects decided to make a move towards us, but we aren't going to hinder their journey. Everyone in your department is lucky they were called off before any lasting damage could be done.' She turned to look at the map on the wall, watching the crawling progress of the yellow dots. 'It was getting towards the time to bring them in anyway. There's no harm in things happening a little faster than anticipated.'

Looking back at the young man, Valencia Martinez smiled benevolently, and for a moment he saw her the way the flock must have. Then she spoke, and the utter calmness in her voice was terrifying.

'I think it's time for all of this child's play to end.'

**A/N *legasp* Dr Martinez is evil! Or is she? I don't know. Actually, I do - I'm writing it. But YOU don't. Muahaha. :P Hopefully I'll have chapter 12 up by tonight, so long as the Wi-Fi stays on. Review!**


	13. Chapter 12

**A/N My sister's sleeping in my room tonight and jeez, she snores something chronic sometimes. -.- This breaks the record for my longest chapter so far. Enjoy!**

'So what's Reno like, exactly?' Nudge called to me over the wind. 'Is it like New York, with all the street performers and the food stalls with hot dogs and ice cream and a big park with lots of trees and those huge skyscrapers, which actually aren't that huge if you think about how high we can fly and all, but still pretty huge just for buildings-'

I sighed and rubbed at my forehead, letting her ramble on as I shot a long-suffering look over at Fang, then caught myself as I remembered that this wasn't six months ago; it was crazy how easy it was to fall back into the old habits of treating him as my go-to person. I fixed my gaze resolutely ahead as Nudge came out of her verbal essay on the awesomeness of modern-day architecture.

'-but yeah, what's Reno like, Max?' She fell silent, watching me with big eyes as she waited for a response, the wind tugging at her dark hair.

'I can't really say, Nudge. I wouldn't say it's nearly as big as New York, but apart from that I don't know.'

'So it's like a mystery, then. Flying to some unfamiliar place with no idea what we'll find there or what's lying in wait. Ooh! We're like those sailors in the olden days, before planes and stuff, when they just had to set out in a boat if they wanted to find any new land, and they didn't know if there would be people there already, or new animals that might tear them apart, or diseases or poisonous plants or quicksand or whirlpools. What _are _whirlpools, exactly? How do they start? Are they, like, twisters that got dropped into the sea or…'

And she was off again.

Thankfully she stopped after a while – with two more hours of flying left, I don't think the rest of us would've let her make it to Reno alive if she'd kept talking.

At just past one in the afternoon we arrived in the outskirts of what was, according to the billboards which had started to appear along the highway, the 'biggest little city in the world'. Those of us who were flying swooped down to join the other four, and somehow we managed to cram the ten of us into the van, ending up with most of us piled in the back whilst Ratchet and Star sat up front.

'So,' I said once we were back on the road heading into the city. 'We get there, get food and drinks and whatnot – ow, Iggy, that's my foot! – and then see if we can find a place to crash for tonight.'

'Thanks for the update, Einstein,' Iggy deadpanned, pushing down on my foot harder before letting up, earning himself a scowl made absolutely pointless by the fact that he couldn't see it. Whatever, it made me feel better.

As it happened, it turned out that finding a place was easier said than done. In a city it can get pretty difficult to know where to look for the best unoccupied houses and all, and I kind of got the impression that sleeping rough tonight wouldn't go down well. We hit the streets of downtown Reno – which did, to Nudge's delight, have hot dog stalls – to stock up again, then headed out to the more residential areas to see if we could hit on anything decent. By half three everyone was starting to get cranky, but we stuck to it and about a quarter of an hour later we struck mutant real-estate gold: a street of newly-constructed houses, sitting off one of the main roads that eventually led southwards out of the city. Parking the van on a street around the corner, we clambered out and moved up the road, examining the houses.

'Nothing inside them,' Ratchet commented, sending a sweeping look along all the windows.

'Who cares?' Fang said. 'They've got roofs, right?'

'You know,' Kate piped up thoughtfully, 'there'll probably be a show house or something. Like, the one the company uses to advertise what their homes could look like once they're fully-furnished and everything.'

As if Kate's words had been a cue, a woman in a white blouse and black skirt promptly appeared on the doorstep of one of the houses, her hair pinned up in a neat bun and her name badge catching the sun as she walked towards us. She slowed when she reached about halfway, taking in the fact that none of us were adults, how big the group was, how scruffy we all looked.

'Can I help you kids?' she asked, caution edging her words.

Dylan stepped forwards. He had his hands out in front of him as if to show that he didn't mean any harm, but the woman still cringed a little.

'We were just having a wander around,' he said, and I could practically feel the persuasion in his voice, reminding me of the time he sang in that restaurant in Paris. His words now seemed to have a similar effect on the woman – Sarah, according to her badge – as they had on everyone then; she seemed to relax all of a sudden, the tension going out of her face.

'Oh, well, that's fine, then. So long as you're not entering any of the houses.' She straightened up, as if remembering that she was in the business of selling. 'And if any of your parents are looking to purchase a new property, let them know that tours around our show house can be scheduled through our website.' Her hand lifted to gesture towards the large billboard advertising the new houses.

Dylan cocked his head, as if interesting in her words.

'I actually think my parents might be looking to buy at the moment. What time are tours available until?'

'The show house is open from nine until five.'

'Great. Thank you very much, ma'am,' Dylan replied, shooting an adult-appeasing smile in her direction. Sarah looked a little startled at his politeness, but recovered quickly, nodding once before walking briskly away from us back to the house.

'That was some smooth talking,' Ratchet hooted as the door closed behind her. He clapped Dylan on the shoulder. 'I'm liking you more and more.'

* * *

We hid out in the van for the next couple of hours, until eventually we saw a small car drive around the corner and away down the road; Sarah's bun was visible as a bump on the crown of her head as she passed. Making our way back to the house, we started towards the front door, Iggy pulling a small wrench and a picking key out of his bag.

'Iggy!'

He turned to grin at me, his pale eyes dancing.

'Always come prepared.'

Starting to insert the metal rods into the lock on the front door, he was stopped when Ratchet's voice rang out.

'Hold up! Nice place like this, they're gonna have some security about.' He threw a glance through the window, then nodded. 'Yep, motion detectors, up on the wall. Measure the reflection of ultrasonic waves off moving objects, then transform the detection into an electric signal. Probably link up to some transmitting alarm which reaches back to the main office. And it looks like they're fitted with red light cameras, too. Until those are disabled, we're not getting in there with getting caught.'

The rest of us stared at him, and he looked around, shrugging.

'What? People, I was in a gang. It was my job to scout places out for security and stuff.'

'So you think you can disable them, then?' Fang asked, moving forwards to peer in the window.

Ratchet shook his head ruefully.

'No can do, Boss Man. I mean, I was always the one on lookout, wasn't I? Never got the chance to do it myself.'

Nudge coughed tentatively.

'I might be able to. You know, if I could get close enough.'

Ratchet looked at her unbelievingly.

'You sure about that, kid? What do you know about wires and junk?'

She fidgeted with the hem of her shirt.

'Quite a lot, actually; I hacked the mainframe computer at the Itex headquarters in Virginia in under two minutes.' She seemed to be boosted by her own words, and lifted her head to look Ratchet in the eye, daring him to challenge her.

'Well damn, okay,' he said. 'But we'll have to kill the electricity first.' He looked upwards. 'Doesn't look as though they're wired up to the grid yet, so there's gotta be some kind of circuit breaker serving the house somewhere. Flip the switch, get in, disable the alarms, power back on and boom: we're golden.'

Turned out we were. Star did a split-second loop around the building, reappearing beside us having already cut out the power supply, which left Iggy free to break in through the front door. Five minutes later Nudge was standing up on a cabinet in the living room, fiddling with the circuits inside the second motion detector; the first one out in the hallway hung limply off the wall, having already been victim to her quick fingers picking up the movements of the people who made it, the people who installed it, rapidly reversing their actions.

'I think that's done,' she announced, springing down onto the floor and cracking her knuckles.

'Okay, so that means it's time to turn the power back on?' I looked at Ratchet, who nodded slowly.

'Yeah, power can go on again. But you oughta know that we might not be aware if it hasn't worked – the alarm might not sound out here, just in the offices or straight to the police or something, so be ready to run if I say I hear anything at any time.'

'Will do,' I replied, before nodding at Star. She was gone and back in a flash, and everyone stood for a moment, waiting to see if anything would happen. The house was quiet.

'Okay,' I said into the silence. 'Everybody stays in this room or in the hallway. No wandering around into other rooms – the detectors aren't disabled anywhere else. Great job, guys.' I grinned at Nudge, then over at Ratchet, who shrugged.

'Hey,' he said, 'don't look at me. Little Miss Black Hat over here did all the work.'

I had no idea what he meant, but Nudge looked affronted.

'I'm so _not_ a Black Hat,' she stated emphatically. 'They're jerks who just hack to steal stuff and damage other people's data! I do it to _survive_.'

'Tell that to the guys whose systems you've infiltrated,' retorted Ratchet.

I tuned out after that; this was not the kind of conversation I belonged in.

We whiled away the afternoon in our temporary home, just glad to have somewhere to crash, then as the sky began to darken everyone started to pass out where they sat, one by one. I said I'd stay up to take first watch – it seemed fair, since I'd been the one who'd woken everyone up the night before and dragged them all out on a life-threatening mission – and I sat on the couch by the window, listening to the deep breathing and snores of the group.

There was a shuffling sound behind me and I turned quickly to see Dylan stepping through the maze of sleeping bodies towards where I sat. Lowering himself down next to me, he stayed quiet for a while before speaking:

'I'm sorry for getting angry back there. When we were flying, I mean. It wasn't fair of me to bring it all up; there's a lot going on and I shouldn't be giving you anything else to have to worry about.'

I nodded slightly, taking in what he'd said.

'I was harsh on you,' I replied. 'Saying that I didn't have feelings for you and all that.' I cringed inwardly, hating how sappy I sounded, hating the fact that I knew we had to have this talk. 'I guess the fact is that I really don't know what's going on, so I shouldn't have been spewing that stuff out when I wasn't even sure it was true.'

Dylan looked at me for a moment, then suddenly he was pulling me towards him. He kissed me softly, his hand gentle on the back of my neck, and I'll admit that my heart did speed up a bit.

When he pulled back, I looked away from him, staring out of the window instead.

'You know what I can't understand?' I said. My voice came out unexpectedly loud and I shot a quick look over at the rest of the group before turning back to the window, speaking more quietly this time. 'You say that you love me, and you want me to love you, but you don't seem to mind how it happens.' I glanced at him, and his face looked perplexed. 'Like… Say I gave in. Say you broke me down and kept on and on with the subject until eventually I couldn't help but believe that there was no other option but to love you. Would you be happy with that?' My voice wasn't angry or sarcastic; the question was asked as a real one, genuinely looking for an answer in an attempt to understand what exactly was going on. 'Isn't there something kind of fake about it? If that were the case, wouldn't it be like I was loving you because you'd talked me into it, rather than just because I did all by myself?'

Dylan frowned, thinking over what I'd said.

'Would it really matter?' he asked after a moment. 'I mean, that's what I've been saying about what I feel for you this whole time – to me it doesn't mean anything that I was programmed to love you or whatever it was that they did. All I know is that it's how I feel, and I don't think that makes it fake. I just love you. Doesn't matter how it happened. To me, it's real.'

Damn, the boy knew how to use his words. But how often am I found without some kind of reply?

'You never did tell me why you loved me.'

'What?'

'In Paris, on the Arc de Triomphe. I asked why you wanted to be with me and you never actually answered.' I felt myself growing red as I remembered how he'd gotten away without giving me a response, but held his gaze, telling him silently that he wasn't getting out of it this time.

The corners of his mouth lifted, and he looked at me dead on.

'Well, you're strong, stronger than anyone I've met before. You love your family and fight to protect them from everything. You don't take any crap. You're smart, even though you might not know it.' He chuckled a little. 'You've always got an answer for everyone-'

'Dylan.' I cut him off, shaking my head. 'That's not it. Anyone can pick out a person's good points and reel them off in a list. That's easy. But you're saying that you _love_ me.'

His face morphed into an expression of confusion, and I was reminded of Omega during the battle at Itex in Germany:

'_I don't know how…to not.'_

'Dig deep, Dylan,' I said quietly. 'Really think about it. And in the end, I get the feeling you'll realise that you have no idea. Because I don't think you _do_ love me. I think you think you do; I'll believe that. But I reckon there's a difference between thinking something and actually feeling it.'

Looking at him, I could feel my forehead creasing up in sorrow – it wasn't a happy moment for me, wasn't a triumph. I didn't relish the fact that he didn't have a response for me because he was so busy having to think over everything he thought he knew. He looked lost, bewildered, like he couldn't understand what was happening.

Then he whipped his head around to look at me, and there was a strange kind of desperation in eyes, an agitation that I'd never seen in him before.

'Why did you love Fang?' he challenged in a loud whisper.

My eyes widened and I let out a startled laugh, my hands clasping together in discomfort. Would I ever get used to his bluntness? I suspected not. Then again, I'd set the question right up for him, and it seemed kind of gutless not to answer it. Besides, it felt like I owed him an honest answer after pushing him for one myself.

'Why did I love Fang?' I repeated under my breath, biting at the inside of my mouth as I thought it through. Dylan watched me unblinkingly. 'I loved him because he drove me totally insane. Sometimes it seemed like he was trying to be completely infuriating, more than anyone I'd ever met in my life. Not that I'd met that many people or anything, but…' I shook my head. 'Not the point. Anyway. He never hesitated to disagree with me or call me out, and he always knew just what to say to be frustrating. But then he always knew just what to say to cheer me up, or make me laugh, or… He knew me.'

Dylan twisted so that I couldn't avoid his gaze.

'_I_ know you.'

I closed my eyes and rubbed both hands over my face, staying silent for a moment before replying.

'No, I mean… The way he knew me… No one told him anything, he didn't have any help, but… He learned me. Over a whole lot of time, he learned me. And he wasn't perfect, nowhere near. But I wasn't perfect either.' I paused, then corrected myself. 'I'm not perfect.' Laughing a little again, I lifted my arms and gestured towards myself like 'observe'. 'I mean, look at me, look at my life; I'm so used to things going wrong that when something starts to go even remotely right I completely freak out. Maybe I can't handle perfect. Maybe perfect is too much for me.' The words were said almost as I thought them for the first time, with absolutely no planning involved, but they seemed to hit Dylan hard. He was completely still for a moment, then he stood up abruptly.

'I'm not going to stop,' he said quietly, not looking at me. 'I'm not going to give up.'

I stared down at my hands clasped together in my lap.

'I know,' I whispered.

Then he walked away, picking over the others as they slept, finally settling himself down near the doorway leading into the hall.

I turned back to the window, pulling my knees up in front of me as I gazed out at the black sky. _God,_ being a teenager sucked.

**A/N Let me know what you think. :)**


	14. Chapter 13

**A/N Dayumn, writing in Iggy's perspective is hard...**

Iggy was awoken the next morning by Fang nudging him in the ribs with his foot.

'We're getting out of here.' His low voice came from Iggy's left, audible over the rustlings of clothes and the chatter of the others as they roused and prepared to leave. Yawning widely, Iggy sat up and stretch his arms into the air over his head, feeling the muscles in his back pulling and loosening after hours spent on the floor. It had actually been a pretty solid night's sleep; now that there were ten of them, everyone got nights off from taking watch, which he wasn't complaining about in the slightest. Things had been so awful lately, he mused as he groped for his pack, what with Fang running off and Max being put pretty much out of action, then Ella and Dr M and Jeb disappearing, and finally Angel… He held his breath for a moment, not trusting himself to keep everything together unless he was utterly motionless.

The wave of panic passed, and Iggy felt himself drooping a little as he relaxed again. It was exhausting, all of this emotional business; he could do danger, excitement, fear, that was all fine. Easy after a whole lifetime of it. But things had always felt a bit like a game – it had all been about the biggest explosion, the fastest lock-pick – and now, suddenly, within the last few months, everything had become much more real. Now death seemed so _palpable_ to him, and all these feelings were weighing him down. The last time he'd had such a tenuous grip on his emotions was during the whole fiasco with his parents, but he'd moved on fairly quickly from that; he had his own family… His own family which had been through so many changes recently. It was all just a bit hard to adjust to.

He couldn't let it get the better of him, though. It had been easy to play the joker with Gazzy when life was all about running from mad scientists and going on crazy quests to 'save the world', easy to act light-hearted and balance out Fang's intensity. That was how it had been: him and Fang, the two older guys in the flock, doling out their own specialties. Of course, Max had always paid more attention to Fang, and to be frank Iggy wasn't one to complain about it – he really didn't want _that_ kind of attention from her – but all the same he'd always felt like he had his part to play, and he did it well, and everything was cool. Then Fang left, and suddenly Iggy had to try and take on the role of alpha male. There was Dylan, obviously, but the guy was new to the flock and there'd still been some detachment between him and the rest of them, particularly right after Fang went and it kind of seemed like it might have been _because_ of Dylan. So the part had become Iggy's to play, and suddenly he couldn't be that guy anymore, that guy who messed around and made stupid jokes and fiddled around with explosives. He had to step up and take the load, especially during that time when Max was pretty much out of action.

The two groups coming together had been such a relief. It meant that he could start to be more like _Iggy_ again. But even so, he kind of felt like the whole thing had aged him a bit, and now there were parts of that load that he couldn't shake from his shoulders, probably never would.

His thoughts were broken by Gazzy's jacket brushing his arm – it was time to go.

'Where are we off to now?' That was Kate, her voice ringing out from where Iggy seemed to remember the doorway into the hall being.

'Straight to the School from here. Death Valley, California,' replied Max.

'So much happiness all in one place,' Iggy quipped sarcastically, earning a few quiet laughs along with a sigh from Max that sounded half-despairing and half-amused.

'Should be just over six hours,' she finished, and he felt her footsteps vibrate through the ground and up into his own feet as she crossed the room. Her clap rang in his ears. 'Let's get going.'

Two minutes later they were up in the air, the wind pushing Iggy's hair back from his forehead and grazing lightly against his skin. His thoughts about flying had always been mixed; on the one hand, it was incredible to feel those muscles working, pushing him through the sky in a way that only a handful of people could experience, but on the other he felt his blindness much more keenly up here. In the air there were no vibrations to let him know where people where and how they were moving. Sure, the shifts in air currents helped, but it was never quite the same as being on the ground – the further something was from solid, the harder it was to read. Then again, Iggy thought, it wasn't like he'd ever give his wings up. Not for anything. Not even to see again.

When they finally began to draw near to Death Valley – he still couldn't help snorting a little at the aptness of the School's location – the sun was beating down on Iggy's back like a hammer, drawing sweat out of places he hadn't known _could_ sweat.

'Sun isn't good for me!' he shouted to the others. 'Sky, sure. Sun, no. I clearly wasn't built for it.' He held his pale arms out in front of him to demonstrate his point.

'Wimp,' Gazzy replied from beside him. 'It's not that bad.'

Iggy shook his head dramatically, throwing his hands up in a flamboyant theatrical gesture.

'No, young sir. I'm like Icarus; flying too close to the sun will mean my doom.' He let himself drop through the air in an exaggerated swoon, catching himself after a few feet and swooping back up again with a grin.

'Did Icarus have a good sense of smell?' Gazzy asked thoughtfully.

Iggy frowned, confused.

'I don't know. Why is it important?'

Gazzy let out a wicked snigger, and not a second later Iggy was almost knocked out of the sky by a stench so powerful it was like a solid wall ramming him in the face.

'Oh, _jeez_, Gazzy,' he choked. 'How is it that strong in the _sky_, with the wind and everything? What, does the smell just _hang_ around you?'

The sky was soon filled with cries of disgust as the smell reached the rest of the flock, and the rest of the journey was spent berating the Gasman, who, if his cackling was anything to go by, was entirely unfazed.

Once they reached the valley, a few minutes of cautious circling – what, like they wanted to advertise to the School that they were there? – revealed multiple small caves in the sides of the surrounding mountains, and it was in one of these that they set down their packs. Nudge ran to the end of the ledge sticking out over the valley at the front of the cave, spreading her arms wide.

'Near… Far… Whereeeeever you aaaaare…' she warbled, the flat notes making Iggy wince.

Then there was the job of getting back to where the road had finished and flying the other four members of the group up to their designated base. After a while of discussion, Max decided that they would spend the coming night in the cave before beginning recon on the School.

'We've been on the move for the last few days; if we're gonna be breaking in and unleashing some torment then we might as well be rested. And Star, you won't be able to use your arm properly whether we go today or tomorrow, but the longer you can take it easy, the better.'

A few hours later, Iggy wandered out of the cave, trying to form a picture of his surroundings. He'd taken a few steps up a narrow path to the left of the cave opening, tracing his hand lightly along the rocky wall of the mountainside, when he felt a pair of hands – Ratchet's, he thought – grabbing his arm and pulling him sharply backwards.

'What are you doing? Are you bl-' Ratchet cut off, realising what he was saying. Iggy raised his eyebrows in mock anticipation for the end of the sentence.

'Am I…? What? Blind?' He shook his head and swatted a hand through the air, brushing the word away. 'Nah. But people give you special treatment so long as they think you are.'

Ratchet snorted.

'So what was I just about to walk into?' Iggy asked.

'Crevice. Not very wide, so I don't reckon your wings would've been any use.'

He nodded, pulling a face like 'not bad', then turned his face towards the point where Ratchet's voice was coming from.

'Thanks.'

'No sweat… So Motormouth said that it was some whacked-up operation that did it.' The question was blunt, no less than Iggy would've expected from the former gang member.

'Yeah,' he replied shortly, waiting to see what Ratchet would say next.

'Just that that was how I ended up like I am. The sight, that is. I've been thinking maybe it was the same operation they tried on both of us.'

Iggy shook his head.

'They were trying to give me built-in night vision, not super senses.'

Silence for a moment, then:

'What's it like?' The question sprang out of Iggy before he could stop it. He heard Ratchet take in a breath and scratch at the rock wall beside him.

'In some ways it's cool, I guess. Whenever it helps in some way, then it's cool. But most of the time it's kind of overwhelming. Gotta say, man, there are times when I _wish_ I could just see nothing.'

'Maybe we could switch,' Iggy said dryly, bringing out another laugh from Ratchet.

'Yeah, maybe.'

'It's weird, 'cause I remember what seeing's like. I was seven when I lost it, but I remember the sky and the colours and my friend's faces…'

'Sucks, dude.'

'Yeah... Yes, it sucks. But I guess it's helped, too. I don't reckon I could do a lot of the stuff I do best if I could see. Like, I wouldn't have bothered to learn if I hadn't _had_ to.'

'Makes sense.'

As far as bonding went, it wasn't the most poignant of moments, Iggy thought, but it hadn't been awful, either. Then both boys' heads snapped up as raised voices met their sensitive ears: Fang and Dylan. Moving quickly back down the trail, they made their way to the cave; Iggy was focussing too hard on navigating the path to catch anything that was said, but the sound of a punch being thrown was unmistakeable, as was Dylan's grunt of pain that came with it.

'Fang! Dylan! Stop it, both of you!' Max's voice, sounding just about as angry as Iggy had ever heard it. There was a scuffling noise as she broke the two apart. '_What is wrong with you?_'

Hard, riled breaths came from both sides of the cave, Dylan's on the left and Fang's on the right. Neither of them spoke.

'Well?' Max demanded. 'What the_ hell_ just happened?'

Fang's voice was low.

'I'm outta here.' Then his footsteps came moving quickly past Iggy and there was a whoosh as he snapped out his wings and threw himself off the ledge.

No one dared to say anything. Iggy wound his fingers together, twisting them around each other just for something to do.

'You want to explain that?' Max asked, her voice deadly deliberate.

'It was just a misunderstanding,' started Dylan, but Ratchet cut him off.

'Hey, don't be playing that card. You two have been rattling each other since the group came together. I saw all those scowls, and the words have been, ah… Less than polite, let's say. Just because you think no one can hear you...'

Max made a furious sound in the back of her throat, and Iggy could hear her gritting her teeth, grinding them together.

'Get your act together,' she shot at Dylan. 'I'll be back in a bit.'

Then she, too, ran past Iggy and jumped into the air.

'Well, _damn_,' Ratchet said into the silence.

* * *

I swooped upwards, reaching the peak of our crag before landing, standing with my face tilted into the wind. The sun was low in the sky, sending rays of orange highlights across the rough faces of the mountains surrounding me.

'That wasn't smart, Fang,' I said abruptly, still looking out across the valley. I heard pebbles skitter over the edge of the bluff as Fang shifted were he sat, becoming visible.

'How'd you know I was here?' he asked, standing.

I let out a derisive snort of laugher.

'Stuff might be different now but some things never change; you're not completely unreadable to me.'

He didn't move, remaining motionless a few feet behind me.

'It was stupid.'

'Yeah, it was,' I muttered, then raised my voice in frustration, tilting my head to fix him with a fierce stare. 'I mean for God's sake, what exactly were you expecting to achieve?'

He let out an exasperated huff, dropping his head to glare at the ground.

'Dylan… He rubs me up the wrong way, that's all. Talking about you.' The words were said in a growl as if they were being dragged out of him, like he was fighting to keep them in.

'No!' I turned my whole body so that I was facing him fully, anger clawing its way through my blood, burning in my chest. 'No, Fang. You don't get to be jealous, or protective, or riled. It's not your place, it's not your right. You do _not_ have the right to get angry, you do _not_ have the right to get rubbed up the wrong way. You don't have the right to do _anything_ without me saying so because you are back here on _my_ terms, remember?' I was pretty sure that my shouts would be carrying down to the cave, but I was past caring. 'I mean, what did you think, that you'd just waltz in and everything would go straight back to the way it was? Because it can't! Things are different now.'

'Things like Dylan?' Fang snapped back at me, taking an angry step forwards, his voice bitter.

'Yes, things like Dylan! And the flock. And Angel. And my mom, and Ella, and Jeb, and the School, and these four extra people I'm having to worry about all of a sudden. And what you did to me.' My voice lowered as I spoke, dropping back to a normal volume. 'It shook me up, Fang. I never thought that I could put so much into one person, be so _broken_ because of something one person did.'

I'd looked away from him, and when he replied I heard an intense sadness in his voice.

'I wasn't trying to fight him for you. It's over, I get it. I get that you don't love me anymore, and-' My head snapped up, and his face was as it had been when we'd spoken back at the house; completely unguarded and open.

'That's not true,' I interrupted, feeling like everything I had in me was shaking with the hurt and the uncertainty of it all. 'You know that's not true.' I felt a burning in my throat, and spoke through gritted teeth, moving my mouth as little as possible in an attempt to stop myself from just giving way. 'I love you so much it makes my head spin. My stomach hurts with how much I love you. Sometimes I feel like I can't breathe because of it.' I looked him right in the eyes, and I could feel my face starting to screw up as I held back the tears that were threatening; this was the most openly we'd talked since everything fell to pieces, and now that I'd started letting it out it was as though I couldn't keep it from coming anymore. 'And having you around again? Having you around without being _with_ you… It's…' Completely involuntarily, I found myself stepping towards him, like the part of me that lived in the past was gravitating in his direction. 'But the way that you hurt me, I didn't think that _anyone_… I didn't think that anyone could ever hurt me that deeply. Especially not you. There were times when I thought that you were the only thing I could be sure of. And then you weren't.'

I felt myself lose the battle not to cry, and a couple of tears managed to spill over. Fang's hand lifted automatically to brush them away, then stalled in mid-air. He looked completely shaken, crushed, devastated, just as he had when Angel died, and in that moment we weren't leader-Max and strong-guy-Fang. We were what we were: two kids, standing on a mountain, who'd shattered each other's hearts. There's really no way to neaten that one up.

I felt his fingers tentatively graze against my cheek, which only made me cry more, the tears leaking out accompanied by shuddering, gasping breaths. His hand moved to sit on my shoulder, his thumb on my collarbone, and slowly my own hand lifted, almost of its own accord, to rest on his wrist; I couldn't really tell who was shaking harder.

'It was like the rug had been pulled from under my feet,' I managed to get out into the silence, my fingers tightening around his wrist; I needed something to hold onto. 'And maybe I managed to pick myself up again, but that doesn't mean...' I had to stop talking for a moment before I could carry on. Just the physical act of getting words out felt like such hard work. 'That doesn't mean I'm going to go standing on that rug again anytime soon.' Perhaps the metaphor was precarious, but we both knew what I meant. Fang cleared his throat, clearly searching for what to say.

'Does that mean never?' he asked eventually, his voice strained. I screwed up my eyes, totally unable to keep looking at his face, but all that did was heighten everything else: his other hand moving to hold my waist, pulling me closer; _my_ other hand gripping at his shirt just below the collar, pulling _him _closer; the feel of his breath on my forehead. God, we were so _close_, and it would be so _easy_ to just give in, just reach up to him…

Feeling as though it caused me a physical, tearing, _ripping_ pain, I pulled back, stepping away from him. I couldn't meet his eyes.

'I don't know,' I said, the words hanging in the air between us before I repeated them: 'I don't know.'

**A/N Ah, so much emotion! I don't know if this was slightly OOC for the two of them, but in my mind I feel like a lot of people tend to forget that, at the end of the day and especially when it comes to things like relationships and emotions, they really are just a couple of teenagers who don't know squat about how to handle things, and I wanted to portray that side of them. Feel free to hate me now. Only I'd rather you didn't. There are a lot of twists to come, so keep reading! Let me know what you thought. :)**


	15. Chapter 14

**A/N Next chapter, as promised. Okay, so I caved to my OCD and deleted the author's note from before - it was just annoying me too much that the chapter numbers weren't matching up. :P There are a few parts in this which may be considered a little freaky by some people. At least, I found it a wee bit freaky to write, but that might just have been the way I was picturing it in my head. You've been warned!**

That night was a tense affair. I couldn't stand to be near either Fang or Dylan, and they weren't exactly cuddling up close with each other, either – when you're spending the night in a fairly small cave, having three people avoiding each other isn't the most comfortable situation in the world. As the temperature dropped, we lit a small fire close enough to the entrance of the cave so that the smoke could escape, but not so close that it would be immediately visible to anyone happening to stroll by (so it was unlikely, but paranoia is a funny thing). Despite how hyped up I felt by all of the confusion and the negative energy writhing around in my head, I soon felt myself drifting off, curled up against a rock. The last thing I saw was Nudge's silhouette sitting at the cave opening as she took watch.

Can 'to nightmare' be an action? Because I definitely didn't _dream _whilst I was asleep – I _nightmared_ hard. My head was full of flitting images, most of them not quite clear or complete, but all of them carrying a sense of dread with them: I was running through a white corridor, the walls warping and shimmering as I went, blurred and echoing shouts coming after me; giant chocolate-chip cookies wearing white coats leaned over Star, poking at her injured arm, then they turned into Erasers and drove an oversized hypodermic needle into her shoulder; I stood in a black space, staring at two doors in front of me which bore the faces of Fang and Dylan; Gazzy's wide blue eyes swam into view, and when his mouth moved he sounded like the Voice – _**put the pieces together, Max. You can't win the game if you don't put the pieces together**_ – then suddenly I was facing a massive puzzle which assembled itself into a picture of my mom, Jeb, and Ella; I was balanced on the top of a mountain, jumping out into space only to realise that my wings weren't there, and then I was falling, falling towards the jagged rocks below that looked like scalpel blades as children shot at me from all sides-

I jolted upright in bed, gasping, my hand over my heart. I couldn't help checking my nightgown. No red laser dot. No bullet holes. I fell back on my bed, limp with relief.

Wait… I tensed again. This scene was familiar, somehow. I'd done this before – the waking up from a nightmare, the making sure it really was just all in my head. And I was meant to be in a cave in Death Valley, not in a bed somewhere. I lay frozen, only my eyes moving as they darted around, taking in my surroundings; after a moment I realised that I was back in Colorado, in my bedroom in the E-shaped house Jeb had taken us to when we escaped from the School. My heart pounded against my ribcage, sending too much blood to my head, making me dizzy. _What was going on? _Had it all been a dream, everything since Angel was taken the first time? Could dreams even last that long, stretching out over months of imaginary events and encounters?

I pushed myself slowly up into a sitting position, scanning the room. Everything was still and quiet. After a few minutes I slid out of bed, then my feet seemed to work of their own accord; I was still staring around the room, but it was as if the rest of my body was following some pre-programmed routine, and before I knew it I was standing by the door in my old sweats.

'What the hell is going on?' I murmured, the muscles all over my body bunched up, waiting for something to become clear. My hand reached out for the handle, and I pushed the door open, stepping out into the hall. The early-morning light shone through the huge windows as I walked cautiously along, fighting down the unease that was rising inside me, then I whirled sharply around when I heard a creak behind me.

'Max?' Nudge stood in the doorway to the room she shared with Angel, looking worried. 'Can you come and check on Angel? I don't think she's very well.'

I looked at her blankly, utterly lost, unable to follow what was happening.

'Max!' She waved a hand in front of my face, bringing my attention back to her face. 'Come and look at Angel? She's ill or something.' She frowned. 'You might be too, actually – you look really pale.'

I nodded mutely and moved past Nudge, back towards her room. The door swung open, and I was faced with a bombsite; rubble lay strewn across the floor, the ceiling completely caved in. The wardrobes had been completely splintered by large chunks of rock – where the rocks had come from, I was beyond guessing at. A lamp had been smashed onto the floor, the torn ends of the electric cords giving off weak sparks. I stared in horror at the room, and my eyes were drawn to the corner where Angel's bed was, the curtain that usually covered it lying shredded on the floor; the bed was buried under a pile of collapsed roof and rocks. A wave of panic engulfed me, and I scrambled across the debris-littered floor, struggling towards that corner. I reached it, my hands grasping at the heavy weights that hid the bed from view, eventually clearing down far enough to see a small blonde figure crushed underneath the mound.

'She doesn't look too good, does she Max?' Nudge said from behind me, her voice mildly concerned. I suddenly became aware of a keening sound in my ears, and I realised it was me, screaming, screaming so hard it felt as though my vocal cords were about to snap.

That was when I woke up for real, my terrified breaths echoing slightly through the cave. Nudge, the real Nudge, was hovering over me, her face worried.

'Max, are you alright?' she whispered, making sure not to wake the others. 'You were twisting around, all jerky like one of those puppets with the strings, and you kept making noises and it was really weird and kind of scary and are you okay? Are the brain attacks back? What _happened_?' Her large brown eyes stared at me, and I rubbed at my temples, scrutinizing the cave, looking for anything out of place, anything that could mean I was still dreaming.

'It's okay, sweetie, I just had a nightmare,' I said softly, looking back at her and forcing a smile. 'I'm fine.'

She sat back on her heels, her face clearing in understanding and relief.

'That must've been a really bad one, then. You looked like you were being electrocuted or something – I was just about to wake everyone up 'cause I didn't know what to do. What _should_ you do if someone's going all crazy in their sleep and you can't wake them up? Do you have t-'

'Nudge,' I interrupted, closing my eyes. 'I'm sorry I scared you. It's probably just because of how intense everything's been.' I opened my eyes again, looking at her with a more genuine smile this time. 'Don't worry about me. I'm fine.'

Nodding, she gave me a quick hug and went back to her spot at the front of the cave to finish her watch. I leaned back against the wall, feeling my heart rate slowly dropping back to normal. For a while I just sat there, not wanting to fall asleep again in case more dreams came to haunt me, but eventually I felt myself sliding down the wall, slipping into sleep once more.

* * *

I didn't dream anymore that night, but when I woke in the morning I was still feeling a bit frazzled .The whole thing had been like flipping through a scrapbook of everything that was tormenting me at the moment; things like where my mom was, and how we were going to manage to take the School down, and whether we'd ever get the chance to live safely like we had during those years in Colorado.

Sucking air through my teeth, I steeled myself before addressing the group, making my voice strong and confident.

'Today's the day, guys. The plan right now is to get in close to the School, scout out what's happening, what kind of defences they've got up. I don't think that we all need to go along for this one-'

I was cut off by a bunch of protests, and quickly held my hands up to quieten everybody down.

'Max, getting left up here would suck _so_ much,' Nudge said.

'Doesn't it seem like we shouldn't be breaking everyone up again?' Kate asked, shrugging one shoulder slightly.

I looked at the resolute faces surrounding me, then sighed.

'Okay. _But _you all need to keep in mind that this morning is just recon work – I don't want anyone doing anything stupid, you clear?' It was a pointed question, and Iggy's jaw dropped in mock indignation as he sensed the words being aimed at him.

'I object! Everything I do is done with careful planning and consideration of the consequences.' He nodded his head as if to say 'so there', and I raised an eyebrow.

'So what exactly was the point of blowing up the parking lot the last time we were here?' I asked wryly.

He grinned.

'Well, _that_ was just fun. Gotta have fun, Max!'

I rolled my eyes, shaking my head despairingly as we left the cave, making our way around the curve of the mountainside until we could see the School nestled in the foothills, looking completely innocent from the outside.

Something seemed to happen to Ratchet as we neared the building; he seemed to be getting more and more jittery, his eyebrows were furrowing beneath his sunglasses, and his hands pulling at the hem of his shirt.

'Ratchet? What's wrong?' Holden asked – clearly I wasn't the only one who'd noticed some strange behaviour.

'I'm not sure,' Ratchet replied, looking more genuinely troubled than I'd ever seen him before, and what with his gang history and all that was kind of a big deal; it took a fair amount to shake him. 'Something doesn't feel right, but I can't pin it down, y'know?'

By the time we were flying the four non-winged members of our group down the side of the mountain, he was so tense and fidgety that Fang almost lost hold of him in mid-air.

'Woah! Seriously, man, what's going on?'

Ratchet shook his head, tossing it from side to side in frustration.

'Don't know. That's what's got me so wired – _something's _up and I don't know what it is. I just know something's not adding up somewhere in my head.'

We landed in the bowl of the valley close to the high wall created by the mountains surrounding it, and at that moment Ratchet let out a stifled shout of realisation.

'There's no noise,' he breathed, looking stunned. 'There are no sounds coming from that building. None at all. _Shit_, why didn't I notice that?'

Fang clapped him once on the shoulder.

'You did. You noticed. Now we just need to work out why it's so quiet.'

We set out towards the School, keeping low and staying close to the edges of the valley. Ratchet kept a keen watch on the windows of the looming building, muttering under his breath, but once we'd crept up to the fence surrounding the complex we didn't need him to explain anything to us: the place was deserted. Nothing moved in the windows, there were no figures in white coats dotted around the grounds, the parking lot was empty… Everything was completely still.

'_What?_' whispered Star incredulously, her normal, indifferent demeanour pushed aside by bewilderment. We all stared around at each other, wondering what the hell was going on, then it was as if we all came to some unspoken agreement: moving warily, keeping our eyes on the School at all times, we cleared the fence and ended up standing right in front of an entrance into the building. Still nothing happened.

'Huh… Good thing we didn't come a long way for this,' Star said into the silence, the sarcasm evident in her voice.

'What do we do now?' Dylan asked, looking up at the grey stone wall.

I bit my lip, my eyes flickering around between the door and the faces of the group around me and the empty windows.

'Maybe there's something inside,' I said. 'Something that will tell us what went on here.'

'So we're still breaking in?' Kate clarified.

'Guess so, and we might as well go in now. You wanna get the door?'

'Sure.'

The moment Kate's foot made contact with the door, the moment it was ripped off its hinges by the impact, I knew we'd been tricked. Ratchet gave a jerk like he'd been shot, his face twisting in pain and his hands flying up to grasp at his headphones as he tried to block out a sound that no one else could hear. A huge, hairy shape appeared in the doorway, fangs bared in a terrible grin.

'So nice you could drop by,' Ari's clone laughed. 'Welcome to the madhouse.'

**A/N Let me know what you think! :)**


	16. Chapter 15

**A/N I don't know why, exactly, but this was one of the hardest chapters for me to write so far. *shrugs* Hope you enjoy it!**

So let's review the situation: the already emotionally- and physically-battered group was standing in the grounds of the all-too-occupied School, Ratchet had been incapacitated by something we couldn't even hear, let alone fight, and we were facing a bloodthirsty mutant wolf-man (plus his buddies, if the sounds coming from the hall behind him were anything to go by) who had caught us completely unawares and off-guard.

Yeah… Rock on.

'So, Not-Ari, how've you been? They treating you well here? Keeping your kibble topped up nicely?' I asked conversationally, all the while keeping my muscles tense, looking for an opportunity to make a move. His lip curled at my words, but there was still a gleam of sadistic satisfaction in his yellow eyes.

'Go ahead and taunt me, Maxie,' he sneered, 'but don't think you're getting out of this. You're completely surrounded.'

I raised my eyebrows in mock surprise, looking over both shoulders in an exaggerated sweep of the empty space in back of us, then spread my hands sheepishly and threw a condescending smile at him.

'Did they ever actually teach what that word means?' I spoke slowly, like you do when you're trying to explain something to a child. 'Because it kinda looks to me like you've got the wrong idea.'

Not-Ari gave a low, chilling snigger, then clapped his huge paws together, the sound bouncing off the valley walls. Suddenly a row of people appeared on the roof above us; children, all wearing black helmets fitted with small metal devices.

'Meet Generation 77.31,' Not-Ari said casually. 'Interesting bunch, really. All cloned from a single embryo. Not very lively, but they're hooked up to some pretty nifty lasers and can track speeds surpassing 900 miles per hour.' He bared his teeth at me delightedly. 'Think your little track-runner can outrace that?'

I looked sideways at Star. Her jaw was clenched and I knew we were thinking the same thought: _No. No, she couldn't._ Not-Ari interpreted our silence correctly and gave a gravelly laugh, fixing his gaze on Star.

'You'd be in pieces before you'd made it three steps. And that goes for anyone who fancies causing trouble, which is why you're all gonna come with me now.' He frowned a little and sighed, crossing his thick arms over his chest and turning back to look at one of the mutts standing behind him. 'You know, there's something about things being so easy that takes the fun out of it all.' Tutting slightly, he moved forwards out of the doorway and round back of us, his groupies following him until there were enough of them to herd us through the entrance and into the corridor beyond. Ratchet, barely able to stand by this point, was grabbed roughly by the arm and pulled along, his feet catching on the floor as he moved. His hands were still clamped over his headphones, and his whole body was hunched over in pain.

'What's happening to him?' Gazzy asked as we were pushed along, his voice tight and scared.

Not-Ari gave him an extra shove in the small of the back, making him lurch forwards.

'We couldn't have him listening in on all of our important conversations, now could we?' he said. 'A high-frequency signal is piped through every room in the place. Too high for anyone with normal hearing to pick up on-' He stuck his snout into Ratchet's face and grinned maliciously. '-but you're not normal, are you?'

'So it's like a dog whistle,' I established.

'Something like that,' he replied, raising his eyebrows in smug satisfaction.

I turned my head to look at him as we walked, arranging my face into a puzzled expression.

'How come you can't hear it, then?'

Despite the situation we were in, my words got a few snorts from the group. The smile dropped from Not-Ari's face and he snarled, pulling back a paw the size of a baseball mitt and whacking me across the face; I felt his claws slice over my cheek, blood spraying as my head was snapped sideways and I staggered into Iggy slightly. The group around me jumped at the attack, training their eyes on the drama even as they carried on walking, ready to fight if that was what it came to. Recovering my balance, I clenched my hands up into fists, about to return fire, but something caught my eye: behind us, those Gen 77.31 kids were striding smoothly along, their laser whatsits trained on me. Scowling, I took a deep breath in through my nose and fixed my stare forwards, pulling the sleeve of my jacket over my hand to press against my cheek in an attempt to stem the blood flow. I winced as the material grazed roughly over the cuts. _Damn, they're actually kinda deep – definitely going to scar._

We continued moving, being driven deeper and deeper into the School through winding hallways and heavy metal doors. The Erasers around us slowed as we reached a wider corridor with large observation windows along its length, forcing us to slow down with them and take in what was happening in the rooms we were going past. My insides clenched and I could feel myself starting to shake, my heart thumping in my ears and fresh blood flowing down the side of my face as my hand fell slack. Surrounding us were scenes from our childhoods, our nightmares; medical theatres and examination rooms, gym equipment and physiological monitors and surgeon's trays. I felt like running to a corner and curling up in a ball as I was assaulted by a barrage of flashbacks:

_My earliest memory, sitting in a dog crate and watching a small figure being carried out of the room, too young to understand, too young to be worried when they were never brought back…_

_Being tied face-down to a metal table and left there, alone in the darkness until the people in the white masks and blue gloves came along to cut into my spine…_

_Stinging pain in my arm when the stone-faced woman injected that clear liquid into me, the one that always made me go all floppy and unable to fight them…_

_The sight of Iggy's face, his eyes scarred and paler than they used to be, the first time his bandages came off and he realised he was blind…_

_The small, blonde bundle that was thrust into my cage two years before Jeb helped us escape…_

_Crying out as I was forced to run, run for hours on a treadmill, feeling like I was about to throw up or pass out or die, or die, or _die_, just please let me die…_

I looked around at the others, and they all seemed to be having just as bad a time of it as I was: Holden had wrapped his arms tightly around his body, as if trying to protect the parts of him that had been cut into over and over again; Nudge looked completely vacant, her brown eyes staring blankly at the windows we were passing, but her hands were trembling as they hung by her sides; Kate was keeping her gaze fixed firmly on the ground, her face screwed up so that she couldn't see what was going on around her; Fang's face was pale, his jaw taut and fists clenched. Only Dylan didn't seem haunted by it all. His eyes held sorrow as he took in the scenes within the rooms, but there was no suffering of his own there. _Of course, _I thought. _He was Dr Gunther-Hagen's Golden Boy. He never got experimented on. He doesn't know._

As we neared the end of the hallway, the rooms changed from small experimentation labs to larger arenas. In one, sturdy-looking children stood in lines facing large blocks of stone, and as we watched, each gave a synchronised jerk of the head and the blocks flew backwards into the wall. In another, Erasers were attacking human-shaped mannequins, ravaging the stuffed bodies with razor-sharp teeth and claws.

'Our training rooms,' Not-Ari said smugly, gesturing towards the final room of the hallway, in which more Gen 77 kids were being lectured on the downfall of the unaltered human race. We reached the end of the corridor, being pushed through a set of double doors and into a large room with multiple other doors positioned around the walls, each bearing a number to the side of the frame; rows of flat-bed trolleys and individual gurneys were lined up at the back of the room, waiting for the next cage or person to be loaded up and wheeled to whatever torture the wretched thing would be facing.

The Erasers forced us into the middle of the room, then Not-Ari slammed his fist against a small button on the wall beside the door we'd just come through and pointed upwards; high on the wall there was a large pane of glass revealing an observation deck full of computers and studious-looking people in white coats.

'Twenty-four hour surveillance,' he stated. Heads lifted as a buzz sounded through the deck, and a man appeared by the window, a small microphone held to his mouth by a headset.

'Request?' His voice rang through the room, piped out of speakers set along the join between the walls and the ceiling.

'Access to Hold 13 for imprisonment of newly-captured experiments, Subjects Gen 54.6 through 10, 71.1, and 77.3, 10, 11, and 20.'

The whitecoat's fingers skimmed over the tablet computer in his hand, tapping away at the screen as he no doubt verified the information Not-Ari had given him. I watched the scene unfold in front of me, muttering as I leaned over towards Star:

'They're all a bit pole-stuck-where-the-sun-don't-shine, huh?'

She didn't smile, but gave a small sniff of laughter and quirked an eyebrow in agreement as the whitecoat started speaking again.

'Statement check was successful. Please provide evidence of identity.'

Not-Ari moved towards the door numbered 13 and lifted his arm until it was pressed against the wall at a seemingly random point, then withdrew after a few seconds and looked up at the observation deck.

'Evidence of identity accepted. Hold 13 now accessible.'

We were thrown through the metal door into a small antechamber, then past a second door into a room with a high ceiling; it was completely empty except for us, the walls almost blinding in their unbroken whiteness. The Eraser thugs followed us in, the Laser Kids still walking expressionlessly behind them, and then the door slid shut, making a sucking sound as electronic extensions glided forwards and secured it to the frame by some kind of vacuum seal. As soon as the door was closed, Ratchet stopped struggling, his face relaxing and hands dropping from his ears; he was breathing hard, looking shaken.

'Welcome back,' Not-Ari chuckled darkly. Ratchet just glared at him, too dazed to speak. 'Let me tell you a few things about your holding room. A little tour of its modifications. The walls are fitted with the same soundproofing measures as the outside walls of the building – dampening materials and noise-cancelling generators sending out destructive interference signals – so no sound gets in or out.' He spoke as if he'd read the words over and over again, committing them to memory. 'They're also lined with a mineral called lonsdaleite, the hardest material known to man. Pretty rare, but-' He shrugged smugly. '-we've got ways of getting what we want here.'

'Do you even know what you're saying?' Iggy asked patronisingly as he surveyed the Erasers, able to make out their shapes now that they were against a backdrop of white. 'It's okay if you don't understand what it all means – those were some pretty big words.'

Not-Ari growled and his fur bristled.

'I'll tell you what it means,' he said, his voice rumbling, deep and deadly, in his throat. 'It means that no one's getting out of here. This room is impossible to escape from, no matter how much weight you can lift or how fast you can run. You're trapped. I don't need to understand anything else.'

I felt fear clamp down on me as I realised that he could actually be right; it seemed as though they'd thought of everything, pinning down our strengths and finding the perfect way to counter them. He turned away and raised his arm to a spot on the wall again, the door sliding open after a few seconds to reveal the still-locked one beyond it, and Ratchet tensed as the sound that only he could hear reached through to him again. The Erasers made their way out of the room and into the antechamber, waiting for the first door to close behind them so that the second could be opened. Just before he left, Not-Ari looked back at me.

'Oh, and by the way,' he said with a dark laugh, 'you should be getting a visit soon. The General's been expecting you.' He gave me a look, and there was a strange gleam in his eyes, as though he knew something I didn't.

Then the door slid closed behind him, and we were left sitting in a silent, blank room.

Crap.

**A/N Don't forget to review. The button's right there. :D**


	17. Chapter 16

**A/N So I had a few people PM me and say that they couldn't review the last chapter because I'd deleted the author's note, meaning they were down as already having commented on that chapter. I, being a bit slow on the uptake there, did not realise that would happen when I deleted the author's note. So apologies for being a moron. On with the chapter!**

Echoing bangs rang around our cell as Kate kicked again and again at the door; she attacked it with a desperate energy, releasing enough power into it to crumple any normal metal hatch. Unfortunately for us, that wasn't what this was. She was muttering agitatedly under her breath as she threw out strikes, and I looked around at the rest of the group with concern; since I'd met her, Kate had always been one of the more controlled out of the lot of us, staying positive and calm at times when everyone else had been close to quitting. To see her so frantic now was kind of alarming.

I stepped forwards hesitantly until I stood behind her, unsure of what to do.

'Um, Kate?' I said. 'Maybe you should stop now. It's not working.'

When she didn't reply, I reached out to lay a hand on her shoulder.

'Kate-' I started, but I was cut short when she shrugged me off her, the force in the slight movement enough to send me staggering back a few steps. She stood still for a second, breathing hard, her eyes fixed on the door.

'I can _do_ this,' she said through gritted teeth. 'I've never not been able to get through _anything_ before. I'm not letting a door lined with some stupid rock stop me.' And with that, she continued to beat against the door, her feet and fists hitting out at the metal.

I stared hopelessly back at the others and my eyes landed on Star, who stood to the side by one of the walls, her arm still held up in its makeshift sling and her gaze trained on Kate. There was a strange kind of sadness in her face, a look that suggested she'd seen this sort of thing happen before. As I watched she gave a small cough, dropping her head to look at the floor, and when she raised it again she had a look of determination in her eyes. Zipping up to Kate's side, she slapped her hard across the face so quickly that the other girl didn't have a chance to block it. Kate stared at her friend, eyebrows practically disappearing into her hairline, shock taking her attention away from the door.

'Kate. Stop,' Star said, her voice slow and firm, leaving no room for argument. 'Look at your hands. That door isn't going to break, and all you're doing is hurting yourself, which is probably just what those assholes want. Stop now.'

Kate's gaze fell to her hands, the skinned knuckles swollen and bleeding, and when she looked back at Star the wildness was gone from her eyes. The two of them just stood facing each other for a moment, and then Kate fell on her friend, wrapping her arms around the smaller girl's shoulders, her breath coming out as shaky sobs. Star patted her lightly on the shoulder, then pulled back and put a hand on Kate's arm, steering her away from the door and towards the edge of the room.

'We should get your hands wrapped up,' she said, starting to remove her sling so that she could use strips of it for bandages, but Kate stopped her.

'Star, you need that. Don't worry about me.'

The blonde girl rolled her eyes and continued to tug the sling off, wincing slightly as she jostled her injured shoulder.

'It's fine. You're meant to start moving dislocations after a couple of days anyway – builds up the strength again. And don't pretend your hands are okay, 'cause they're not.'

Kate wrinkled her nose then gave a sheepish smile.

'Might've broken a finger in my right one. Nothing too bad.' At her words, Star let out a laugh, probably the most genuine I'd heard from her since we'd met, and shook her head in mock despair as she began wrapping up her friend's hands.

'You utter moron,' she sniggered.

The rest of us had been standing motionless the whole time, watching the exchange unfold in baffled silence. Eyes wide, I leaned over to Holden on my left.

'What just happened?' I whispered, my gaze still fixed on the two laughing girls sat by the wall. Holden shook his head slowly, his face holding an expression of mild apprehension.

'Magic?' he replied questioningly, his eyebrows furrowing slightly. 'Did we just see magic?'

'It wouldn't even surprise me anymore.'

After a few moments we broke apart, like a crowd dispersing after a street show, moving to different parts of the room. I wound up sat with my back against the wall opposite the door, knocking my head lightly back against the surface behind me as I tried not to let the situation become overpowering; despite the brief distraction that Kate and Star had provided us with, we were still in a really bad place, filled with really bad people, with no way of getting out. Looking around the room, everyone seemed to be trapped inside their own heads, and somehow I knew that we were all waiting for the same thing: the General. When it came down to it, the pull of finding out who had been running this psycho assault course was too much to ignore; there was a strange magnetism there, as if meeting this one person would cause all of our lives and the things we'd gone through to suddenly make sense. It was like there was this weird unspoken agreement between us all – there would be no escaping from this place (if it was even possible) until we'd seen the person who'd made all of us what we were. Like meeting our maker, only for us it was literal.

Gazzy came over to me and sat down by my side, laying his head on my shoulder. I squirmed.

'Your hair's tickling my ear, Gaz,' I said, shifting him off me for a moment so that I could wrap an arm around him instead. We ended up with his head in my lap, my arm laid across his back, my hand stroking his hair slowly.

'We're stuck here, aren't we Max?' His voice floated up to me, muffled by his hands hovering over his mouth as he tugged at his lips, the way he always used to when we were living in the School and he was afraid but didn't want to show it.

I tipped my head backwards until it met the wall, closing my eyes as I tried for the life of me to find a way to comfort him. He'd been brilliant the past couple of days, but at the same time he was still just a kid who'd recently lost his sister and had now been trapped back in an old nightmare.

'No, Gazzy. 'Course not,' I whispered down at him. 'What have I always said, huh? Every time we've been caught or chased?'

He gave a sniff and blinked hard, his gaze drifting around on the wall opposite us.

'There's always a plan?' he said, the words coming out as a question, like he wasn't sure it was the right answer.

'Yep. There's always a plan. So we're gonna be fine, just watch.'

Gazzy twisted his head around to look up at me, his blue eyes – so like his sister's – looking very young and at the same time somehow older than he was.

'But there isn't this time, is there? We can't get out of this room. There isn't a plan.'

I swallowed, pressing my lips together, and it felt like my throat suddenly wasn't big enough anymore.

'Hey, hey, now…' I said, ruffling his hair slightly. 'Always means always. Right now, the plan is to wait; that cloned loser said someone was coming to visit us. The General. That's gotta be the person who's in charge of all this. So we're gonna wait and see what happens next.'

He looked up at me for a moment longer, then turned his face back towards the door.

'Hm... _Wait and see_. Sounds kind of like a non-plan to me,' he said miserably, and I winced. Because it was, really. It _was_ a non-plan. But it was the best I had.

I hunched over until my forehead was resting against Gazzy's temple, my hand moving around to hold his as it lingered by his face.

'We're alright,' I whispered into his ear, feeling as though I was trying to convince myself as much as I was him. 'We're going to be okay. It's all going to be okay.'

* * *

The room was nice enough; there was a comfy bed, a desk with paper and pens and a spinning chair, an en suite bathroom, a big window which let in orangey light when the sun set… Yes, the room was nice enough. But Ella didn't care. The room was a prison. Meals were delivered through a hatch in the wall, the door was kept locked, and the window – made of bulletproof glass – didn't open.

She'd been stuck behind the locked door for nearly two weeks now, and she felt like she was going mad. So much had happened, it almost seemed like it _must_ be a dream, because it was all too intense and too fast and too much to be real. She wasn't even clear on how she'd gotten here.

At least, she remembered the start of it. All too clearly. As the memories came in a rush, running like a film strip through her head, Ella felt a bit dizzy and had to sit down hard on the floor, her face screwing up as she started to cry again for what felt like the hundredth time in the past couple of weeks. She had to be wrong. What she thought had happened couldn't have actually happened. It couldn't be that her mom was the one who'd put her here. No. No, there was some other explanation. Taking control of her breathing, she forced herself to look through the memories slowly, sifting through everything that had happened since Max and the others had saved her from the Doomsday brainwashers.

She'd fallen asleep in the desert with the flock, Iggy resting less than a foot away from her; she'd been able to feel his breath on her face every time he exhaled. Then, in the middle of the night, she'd been woken by a gentle shaking on her shoulder. She'd rolled over to see her mom knelt by her side, stroking Ella's hair from her face and saying that it was time to go.

'Mom?' Ella had said quietly, careful not to wake any of the others. 'What… What's going on? They said you'd disappeared, is everything okay?'

'Yes, sweetie,' Mom had replied. 'It's all fine. Jeb and I had to go and get a few things sorted out. I'll explain it all to you later, but right now we need to go.' She'd nodded her head towards a spot a bit further out, and Ella had squinted into the darkness, just able to see the outline of an unfamiliar car with a figure standing beside it; Jeb. Then she'd looked back at her mother, confusion and tiredness making her need a moment to search for words before she could speak.

'You mean…' she'd said, struggling to understand, 'we all need to go? Let's wake up the othe-'

'No, Ella. Just us. Just you and me and Jeb.'

'But why?'

'I told you I'd explain later.' Mom's voice had taken on a stern tone, like the one she'd always used when Ella was a little girl and refused to eat her greens. 'Stop being silly about this, now; it's very important that we leave as quickly as possible.'

That was the moment when Ella had started to feel really uneasy. She'd glanced back at the still-glowing campfire, the others all curled up on the ground, Max and Dylan lying very close together indeed.

'I don't want to,' she'd said, her voice growing slightly louder. 'I want to stay here.' Iggy had shifted next to her, and Mom's face had morphed into a weird mix of frustration and urgency.

'Ella, this isn't a game, sweetie. We really need to get away from here – it's not safe.'

The memories started to get a bit fuzzy at this point.

She'd pulled Ella into a hug, stroking her hair and rocking them both from side to side slightly as they knelt in the sand, and for a moment the child in Ella – the part of her that still considered her mom's arms to be the safest place in the world – had taken over and she'd thought that everything was going to be okay.

Then she'd felt Mom's hand move behind her, coming around to clamp a strangely sweet-smelling cloth over her face. For a couple of seconds Ella had struggled, fighting against her mother's grip which had suddenly become very tight, _too_ tight. Then she'd felt her strength going, her head swimming as her vision blurred and she fell into blackness.

And now she was here. But where was everyone else? What had happened to the others? To Max and Iggy and the rest of the flock? To Jeb? What had happened to her mom? Ella dug the heels of her hands into her eyes as the tears kept coming, wishing with everything she had that she could believe something else, anything other than what had to be the truth. It was her _mother_. She wouldn't do that. She'd spent thirteen years raising Ella, all alone, just the two of them.

But no matter how much she tried to fight the thought, no matter how much she told herself that she couldn't remember what had happened properly, that she might have gotten it wrong, Ella knew; her mother had taken her by force from the desert, from the others, and had put her in this awful room with its locked door and bulletproof window which didn't open. Why, Ella couldn't even begin to work out. But she'd done it.

The hatch pinged open as lunch arrived, the smell wafting over to where Ella sat, but she didn't make a move towards it; she really didn't feel like eating.

* * *

I couldn't be sure how much time had passed since Not-Ari and his Eraser pals had locked us into our holding cell, but my best guess placed it at around an hour or so. The tension in the room was rising as we all waited for the visitor we'd been told was coming, so when the door's vacuum seal released and it started to swing open, it was kind of like everything was moving in slow-motion. Or rather not so much that everything else had slowed, but like my brain had been sped up, so that I had time to whizz through a million different thoughts before the person behind the door was revealed.

_Who is it? Do we know them already? Have we met them before? Would we be able to fight past them and get through the door? (No, there's that freakin' antechamber with the cameras and the second door that won't open for us.) Will we finally get some answers about what all this 'saving the world' crap really means? Will we find out anything about where we came from, why they chose _us_? Am I ready for this? Are they alone or do they have back-up with them? Male or female? (Jeez, is this starting to feel like a game of 'Guess Who?' or is it just me? Do they have facial hair? Are they wearing a red hat? Is it Brian? Yay, I win.)_

My mind racing, all I could do in the last few milliseconds was hope that I was prepared for this.

As it turned out, I was not. Not in the slightest.

**A/N Woop, now we start to get down to the nitty-gritty stuff where all the random shit that hasn't really been tied up in the actual books so far finally gets explained. Or explained by me, anyways. The real explanations will probably be different. Or there just won't be any explanations at all. Part of me thinks that the latter is the more likely option, which makes me sad. *sighs* Oh, well. Review!**


	18. Chapter 17

**A/N Hello, all. This one took a little longer than usual because it's really one of the main chapters that goes right back to the start of the series and explains a lot of the stuff that's happened throughout, so I had to make sure that everything was correct and plausible and that I did the explanation justice. Enjoy!**

There she stood.

Just…

There she stood.

Slowly, I picked myself up from my place on the floor, trying to make sense of the image of my mother standing in the doorway. For a moment I felt the overwhelming urge to run to her, to let her look after me and make things right the way she had before.

'Mom?' I said, and my voice came out sounding young and uncertain. 'Wha-… What are you doing here? Did they capture you too?' _Please_, a voice inside me begged. _Please let her have been captured too._ But I knew I was just being desperate, grasping at straws; as I took in her dark suit, her straight back, the calmness in her eyes, I knew that this wasn't the look of someone who was trapped and afraid. It wasn't the look of someone who'd just laid eyes on people whose safety she'd been worrying about. It wasn't the look of my mom.

_Does not compute._

She smiled at me, tilting her head as little as if to say 'aw, silly child, is this a bit hard for you to get?'

_Error, error, does not compute._

'No, Maximum,' she said, and her voice was missing all the warmth it had held every time she'd spoken to me in the past. 'No. I haven't been captured.' And then she stopped talking, just carried on standing there, regarding us.

'You-' I struggled to talk, but the words were getting stuck in my throat, feeling like they were about to choke me. 'You're-'

'You're the General,' Dylan finished for me.

'I am,' she, my _mom_, confirmed, and I felt all the breath get knocked out of me by those two words. Even though I'd _known_ it, I'd known it as soon as the door opened and I saw her standing there, it was still like a painful electric shock to hear it being said.

'But-' My brain felt like it had just stopped functioning, unable to make sense of what was going on. 'No. No, you _helped_ us!'

She sighed and closed her eyes briefly, looking fed up.

'Please, Maximum, let's not play games. You know things are never that simple.' Her gaze skimmed coolly across the room, then she let out an airy laugh when she saw Ratchet curled up on the floor, his arms wrapped around his head. 'Oh, how rude of me! Your friend's been completely unable to hear anything we've been saying.'

Stepping further into the room, she allowed the door to shut behind her, and Ratchet relaxed as the noise was cut off.

'You'd lock yourself in here with us?' Star asked, her voice cold and even, and The General's – I couldn't call her 'Mom' anymore – eyes fell on her.

'You think I worry that you're going to harm me in some way? Oh, no, that's not a concern of mine at all.'

'And why's that?' Star shot back, the expression on her face saying that she'd have no problem with things getting violent.

'I am the only person able to give the order for your release,' The General explained, placing her hands behind her back. 'If you kill me then you're never getting out of this place.'

'Because you're planning on letting us go as it is?' Iggy spat.

'Perhaps, perhaps not. But with me dead you'd have no chance whatsoever. Besides, I didn't come here today to hurt you. I just wanted to talk.'

I clenched my fists, forcing myself to look her in the face, forcing myself to act as though I wasn't about to throw up with the grief of it all. _If this is who she really is, then you shouldn't feel upset about losing her. She's just another psycho you need to beat, _I told myself.

'Talk about what, exactly?'

She started to stroll across the room, her hands still behind her back, looking for all the world as if she were taking a walk in a park during summer as opposed to being shut in a white box with a group of shell-shocked genetic experiments.

'Quite a lot, really.' Her voice had taken on a conversational tone. 'I'm sure that you've been through a few things that don't quite make sense to you.'

I lifted my chin.

'Such as?'

'You never wondered how it was so easy for us to find you, no matter where you were? Why you started taking on seemingly random mutations? Where that voice in your head came from?' At that she turned to face me, a self-assured, pitiless smile on her lips.

'I-' Thrown, I strained to find a reply. Because I _had_ wondered about all those things. There _had_ been parts of our lives that just didn't add up, never seemed to come to anything, never seemed to quite make sense.

'Let me explain, starting right at the beginning,' The General said genially. 'It's customary for a microchip to be inserted into every subject upon their entry to the School. These chips monitor things such as heart rate, the concentrations of various chemicals and substances in the system – for example blood glucose – and multiple other important occurrences within the body. They also act as a tracking device, meaning that a subject can be pinpointed within seconds anywhere on Earth. We've been monitoring you every moment of your life since you first arrived into our care.' She paused for a moment and let the silence hang in the air, then continued, sounding as if she was savouring everything she said. 'Which is why I was, ah… let's say _surprised_ to find it so easy to, in colloquial terms, get in with you. To get you to trust me. Given your history and your tendency to lean towards wariness, I expected that building up a relationship with you would take months of high-intensity encounters.' She smiled kindly at me, her gaze searching my face. I felt my jaw tighten. 'But it wasn't like that, was it Maximum? You trusted me almost instantly. It didn't take much; I patched up a gunshot wound, and not even a fatal one at that, I took the reveal of your wings in my stride as an understanding stranger, and I gave you a roof over your head for one night.

'I'll admit that when you left that first time I was doubtful that I had made enough of an impression. After not too long I started to plan out a second meeting for us, but before it could be put into action you came to me completely of your own accord, didn't you? And this time you brought company.' Her eyes shifted to Fang, who was leaning against the wall, arms crossed and face blank.

'But I came to you for _help_,' I burst out. 'And you gave it to me. That was the chip, wasn't it? The one you spoke about. That was the chip that I wanted out, and you _did_ it!'

She considered me for a moment, her head tilted back.

'Did I?' she asked eventually, her voice light. 'Did I really? Are you sure it's not still in there? That I didn't just fake it?'

'I watched the surgery,' Fang cut in coolly, training his unblinking gaze on The General. 'I saw you take the chip out.'

She gave a slight tut.

'No, Fang, I'm afraid you didn't. What you saw was me cutting Maximum's arm open, pretending to search around for a while, and then showing you a decoy chip. You were too distracted by her Valium-induced ramblings that you didn't notice the switch being made.'

Despite the horrible situation we were in, I still felt a flush spread across my face at that memory, and Fang's poker face faltered briefly, his eyes flickering to me for a moment before zipping back to The General. She didn't miss the movement.

'Yes, your maudlin adolescent confusion was an ideal cover. The highly-charged emotions of teens are so easy to exploit.'

'So what about my arm, then?' I ground out, wanting to get away from any talk of that kind of thing. 'If it wasn't paralysed because of the chip being removed, what happened? Did you just cut a few nerves whilst you were in there to try and put me out of action?'

'Bear in mind that both Jeb Batchelder and Anne Walker, the people who supposedly repaired your arm, were both under my direction at all times,' The General stated calmly. 'If I'd wanted you to be permanently debilitated by your arm then it would have remained unusable. But I had to make it look realistic. Having warned you so strongly about the dangers of the surgery, to have you emerge from it with no consequences would have seemed suspicious. So when I administered your anaesthetic, I used one exclusive to the School, created in the laboratories just a few corridors from here. A simple nerve block as it appears on the outside, but this one was extraordinary in its endurance; it would not break down until it came into contact with another substance which acted as a counter to its effects. A substance with which you were injected when you arrived back in the School with Drs Batchelder and Walker, giving you full use of your arm once more. An instant reversal of your "paralysis".' She said the last sentence with laughter in her voice, as if the absurdity of the thought amused her.

I felt sick as her words hit home.

'The chip was never removed,' I said weakly. 'It's been giving away our location the whole time.'

'Oh now, Maximum, don't feel too bad – every one of your little flock members had an identical device somewhere in them.'

'You faked the X-rays.' It wasn't a question. Not long after the rest of the flock had met the person who had been my mom, she'd X-rayed all of them to check for chips like mine. It was obvious now that the 'clean' images hadn't been real.

'Why didn't you do that with Max's X-ray, then?' piped up Nudge. 'Why did you show her the chip?'

'I think I've mentioned already that this was all about building up trust.' The General pierced me with her stare and smiled cruelly. 'What better way to prove that I was trustworthy than to have you lying there, vulnerable in front of me, and choose to help you rather than hurt you?'

'You're sick,' I growled, still completely horrified by what was happening. The General really did laugh at that, the sound bouncing off the walls of the room.

'Perhaps,' she conceded. 'But it worked. The next thing I knew, you had brought your flock, the people you cared about most in the world and would protect above anything else, to my door. You let me take you all in, feed you, and after just a while longer you let me take part in your decisions, even make some for you. Trust is control, Maximum. And I had it.'

Kate had been frowning throughout the conversation, and chose that moment to get her two cents in:

'So you had control. But why didn't you just capture them straight away? Surely if you wanted to keep them from being a threat then you shouldn't have let them stay free.'

'It was never my intention to restrain them; I had no concern that the flock could pose a threat to the School. My reason for wanting control was to keep them in check, and to explore the ways in which we could use them to our advantage. From very early on it was clear that Maximum and the flock were some of the most successful recombinants we had ever created, and upon that realisation it was decided that, when the time was right, they would be let loose from the School. They would then be used as a measuring device to test any viable subjects that followed them.

'At first the only ones able to survive beyond infancy were the Erasers, and whilst we did manage to create stronger and stronger variations of the original design, it wasn't until a few years after the flock's so-called escape that we moved forwards into a time of massive scientific advancement. This opened many doors for us in terms of what we were able to create, and I'm sure that Maximum and her friends will understand now why they came up against such a wide range of opponents. Within the School, the group is referred to as the Referee.'

And I did understand. Suddenly all of the seemingly random rivals we'd fought over the last year or so made sense; Erasers, Flyboys, clones, Omega, the Uber-Director and his evil henchman Gozen, M-Geeks… So many of them had seemed to come from nowhere, then completely disappear again.

'It's _us_,' I whispered, trying to take in what The General had called us. 'The Referee. The flock.' I looked up at her. 'So everything – the School, the Institute, Itex – they're all the same thing.'

'Quite right, although the School was really the beginning of it all; everything else is a branch off the original concept, each with a slightly different focus in its work.'

'And the Doomsday Group?' Holden asked.

'Also a part of our organisation. You must understand how serious I am when I say that everything you have faced since leaving the School was at our command. I wonder if it occurred to you that there seemed to be times when a mutation would occur in one of you that just happened to become extremely useful very soon after it appeared? We wanted to test you, yes, but at the same time we needed you to be strong enough to act as a valid indicator as to the abilities of our other experiments. Each of you possesses a series of dormant capabilities which can be activated at our will from this location via the mainframe computer, so when a situation called for a new power, we were able to ensure that you had the tools to put up enough of a fight to truly test our latest subjects.

'Of course, the hardest part of our plan was that we had to give you the means to grow strong, but at the same time we couldn't allow you to become a danger to us. So we offset your physical strengths with emotional weaknesses; I'm sure those headaches you had were extremely distressing for both you and your flock, Maximum? And that Eraser you saw when you looked in the mirror? The stress of going to school and having to deal with ordinary life, the different leads on your flock's parents that came to nothing, your own mother-' She chuckled a little. '-being kidnapped by an evil megalomaniac or trapped in a falling plane? Everything was designed to make sure you couldn't achieve any more than we wanted you to. Any triumph you experienced was carefully planned out. On the whole, we managed to keep you under our thumb quite nicely.'

The room was deadly silent for a moment as everyone took in what she'd said. The awful thing was that it made sense; I could see all of the different pieces, all of the things that had confused me and seemed to have no real reason behind them, suddenly falling into place. I cleared my throat, trying to get rid of the football-sized cotton ball that seemed to be stuck in there.

'And the Voice? You mentioned the Voice before,' I said, my words clipped. The General waved a hand as though it wasn't important.

'A second device implanted in your brain from an early age. A fantastic piece of technology, but hardly worth mentioning. Words were transmitted into your auditory cortex from our base here, with a few select people holding the partnering device that allowed them access, myself and Dr Batchelder included.'

Another silence fell, which was quickly shattered by a loud crack as The General clapped her hands together and looked around at us with a smile.

'Well, this has been nice. I think we've covered everything, don't you? Yes, I believe we've discussed everything that needs discussing, so if you'll all excuse me…'

She turned to leave, her hand coming up to press against the wall so that the door would open for her. Dylan's voice called her back:

'Why did you tell us all this? What was the point?'

'Because she's a psycho who likes to play with her food before she eats it?' suggested Iggy.

The General faced him, a dark relish in her eyes.

'Understand that scientists as people have a massive tendency towards pride when it comes to their work. Where would the fun be if we'd had you jumping through our hoops from day one and never taken the chance to tell you about it?'

And then, with a chilling laugh that I felt like one final, physical strike to my chest, she opened the door, and was gone.

**A/N Hope you liked it and that it raised a few ideas about everything that's happened to the group. Review!**


	19. Chapter 18

**A/N Chapter 18, at your service.**

'She didn't tell us why we're here.'

Nudge's words reached me through a haze, just about making their way through my jumbled thoughts.

'Because if she was telling the truth about how much control they've had over us and everything then they could've brought us in at any time, really, and now we don't know if this is just another one of those emotional challenge things that she talked about or if we're actually here for good, even though I think we're probably here for good because if you think about the room and the door and stuff then it just seems like quite a lot to do just for a test, and plus she already told us everything that's been happening since we escaped the very first time and-'

'Seriously, like my ears haven't been through enough already?' Ratchet interrupted. 'We know why we're here – the only reason she kept you out of a holding cell for the last few years is 'cause she needed you guys to be that Referee thing. Now they've started making stronger stuff and you're not what they need to test it out anymore. You're not useful to them now, so there's no point in keeping you around out there where you could turn into a threat, and the rest of us are pretty expendable; it doesn't matter whether we live or die, so we get shoved in here too because we're on your side.'

'I just can't believe it was her,' Gazzy said, shaking his head.

'Well, you were the one who said it back when she and Jeb disappeared – you said you thought they were both in on it,' Iggy pointed out.

'I'd been trying not to bring that up. Thanks. But I still can't believe it, even if I said it before. Seeing it was different than just thinking stuff.'

'I thought that A-…' Nudge started, flinching. She took a breath and continued. 'I thought that Angel said Dr Martinez really did love Max, though. I didn't look like it that much just now. It didn't look like she cared about any of us.'

'We had the chance to ask her about anything that's happened,' Star asserted. 'But we didn't.'

'We should've asked what happened to Ella. I bet she knows,' Gazzy said, and Iggy made a pained noise in the back of his throat.

'There was too much to take in,' I stated, my voice devoid of any emotion. The others all turned to look at me, almost wary of what I might do after everything we'd just discovered. 'She was throwing out all this new information at us, and it was so overwhelming that we couldn't work through it fast enough to find all the things she _wasn't_ telling us. That's it.'

They all looked at me sympathetically, but I waved them off and turned away, walking over to the wall and sliding down it until I was sitting, staring at the floor. Slowly, tentative conversation started up again, but I tuned it out; I needed some time in my own head.

The strange thing was that I didn't feel like crying. There was a sickening, aching loss inside me, but all I really felt like doing right now was breaking something. Which, unfortunately, was not really an option in a room containing only myself and a bunch of people I was trying _not_ to see hurt. It was just so, so, incredibly _unfair_. Right from the first time I met her, Dr Martinez had been like the epitome of everything I could've wanted in a parent, and now to find out that it had all been a lie was just so far past the reaches of "disappointment" that I barely recognised it.

'I'm sorry about your mom,' said Dylan's voice from beside me. I hadn't even noticed him sitting down.

'Don't,' I mumbled, all the muscles in my face feeling taut. 'Talk about her as The General. Talk about her as a scientist. I don't care. But do _not_ refer to her in any way as something belonging to me. That woman is not my mother, not anymore. Please, just leave it alone.'

Out of the corner of my eye I saw him nod, and I felt a rush of gratitude towards him for not trying to push the matter. He laid a hand on my shoulder and in that moment I was tempted to lean into him, just to be close to someone. But I stayed rigid, lifting my head jerkily until it hit the wall, my eyes skating across the white ceiling.

I was jolted out of my thoughts by the sound of the door opening, and I looked across the room to see a whitecoat standing there flanked by two of the Gen77 Laser Kids, holding a clipboard and trying to look authoritative. Personally I though he looked more ready to wet himself than anything. Of course, if I were some puny, non-enhanced human and I'd just walked into a top-security cell full of what were apparently an evil organisation's strongest mutants, I wouldn't be feeling too breezy myself.

'I'm here for the one called Dylan,' he said, glancing at his clipboard then peering at us anxiously. Dylan's hand tightened slightly on my shoulder, but watching the whitecoat's gaze skip between the faces of the different guys in the group, I realised something: he had no idea who Dylan was. Most likely he'd just been given a name and that was it.

'And why would that be, exactly?' I demanded tightly from my spot on the floor. The man consulted his clipboard again and cleared his throat.

'Well, it's been decided that Subject 71.1, known as Dylan, has not achieved what was required of him, and has therefore been slated for extermination.'

I almost felt like laughing at the absurdity of it all.

'Okay, I'll humour you. What has "Subject 71.1" failed to manage?'

'It was planned that he should be successful in causing the disbandment of the group known in some instances as "the flock". Whilst unaware of these expectations himself, his programming should have allowed for unrest to develop and a permanent fracture to occur. Um, which it clearly didn't,' he finished lamely, gesturing nervously around at the group of us.

'Clearly not,' I agreed, lifting my chin and waiting for him to say something else. He coughed and fidgeted a bit with the paper on his clipboard.

'So if Dylan could come with me…' he trailed off hopefully, and in an instant I was on my feet and across the room, my face right up against his.

'You're way out of your depth here,' I said in my quietest, most deadly voice. 'We're a family. We don't sell each other out, we don't give each other away, and you are in serious need of a brain transplant if you think we're about to point out the person you're looking for.'

The whitecoat looked terrified, but he just about managed to hold his ground. I had to give him _some_ credit; I'm seriously scary when I'm pissed.

'I don't want to have to use the 77.31 subjects, but I will if you fail to cooperate. I was sent to retrieve the one called Dylan,' he said, making it about halfway to defiant.

I was about to throw back some kind of witty reply, but something cut me off.

'That's me,' came a voice from the back of the room.

I whipped around, nearly head-butting the whitecoat as I did so, and for a moment I couldn't understand what I was seeing as I watched Fang step forwards to the front of the group. The others around him seemed to balk, staring at him in incomprehension. I opened my mouth to speak, but nothing came out; it was like all my circuits were jammed. Then something managed to sputter to life and I turned back to the whitecoat, my face fierce.

'No, it's not,' I said, daring the man to argue.

'Yes, it is,' Fang said evenly behind me. I turned to face him again, looking back and forth between him and the whitecoat a couple of times before twisting away from the man by the door and taking a few quick strides towards Fang.

'What are you doing?' I whispered through gritted teeth, grabbing his arm roughly.

'It's just me they want, Max,' he said clearly, so that the room could hear him. 'If they don't get what they want then they'll start using force. People will get hurt. It's not worth it. If I go with them then they'll leave you alone for now.'

He looked me dead on, and I felt the panic rising in me at the resolve I saw in his eyes as they bored into mine; he was serious, he was actually doing this.

'Wha-' I began, but he cut me off by placing both hands on either side of my face, his fingers curling, stroking lightly down my cheeks as he leant right in to whisper in my ear.

'Don't say anything. Please.' He pulled back to meet my eyes again, and there was pain in his face now.

'Don't do this,' I pleaded, any thought of a calm front forgotten. _No, no, no, I'm not losing someone else today._

Fang took one, slow look around the group, his gaze lingering on Dylan last of all before turning back to me.

'I have to,' he said quietly. 'It's what's best for you.'

He dropped his hands from my face, and I grabbed at them in an attempt to physically prevent him from leaving, but he calmly pushed my arms down to my sides and walked over to the door where the whitecoat, whose eyes were wide with relief that he hadn't had to do anything extreme, was waiting.

I stood there, feeling completely numb as I watched the Laser Kids take hold of Fang's arms, sticking to either side of him as they marched him from the room. The whitecoat shot a quick, almost remorseful look around at the rest of us, then the door had closed and all four of them had disappeared.

No one spoke.

My legs didn't buckle, my fists didn't clench, I didn't cry; on the outside I was a blank space. But inside my head there was total chaos. Shouting and screaming and _OHMYGODNO_, and bouncing around in there, too loud to ignore, were the words Fang had said to me back in the living room in Oregon:

'…_if you'll have me, then I swear to God, the next time I leave you will be the day I die.'_

Had he been telling the truth?

I couldn't feel any part of my body anymore; every sensation I was experiencing at that moment was internal, pounding through my mind like a hammer. I was only vaguely aware of Dylan standing up slowly, making his way through the mist of horror that had descended over the room. He stopped to the side of me, keeping a slight distance, knowing that I wouldn't even be able to look at him, let alone bear him touching me.

'He did it for me,' I said suddenly, letting the words hang there for a while. 'He saved you so that if we found a way to escape from here, I could be with you. He removed himself from the equation. He took away the choice.'

'Max-' Dylan began, sounding completely shaken.

'No,' I said, my voice so quiet that for a second I wasn't even sure that I'd said the word out loud. 'Don't. Please.'

And none of us said anything else. No one moved, no one made a sound.

That is, not until a good fifteen minutes later when the door hissed open for a third time, and the only person who I think could ever have broken me out of the state of shock I was in walked into the room.

I snapped. Screw not feeling anything, because suddenly it was like all the blood in my body had been set to 'instant boil'.

'You lying, betraying _bastard_!' I roared, throwing myself towards Jeb. I would've torn him apart – in an entirely literal manner – if Kate hadn't lurched forwards and locked my arms in an iron grip. I struggled against her, feeling all the rage towards The General, towards Fang being taken, towards Angel dying and my sister disappearing, towards _every hellish thing_ that had happened in our lives, come coursing through me, all directed at the man standing in front of me now.

'I'm going to kill you, Jeb! I'm going to rip you into pieces, you evil, disgusting excuse for a human being. Kate, let me _go_. He doesn't deserve to live!' I realised I was crying, tears dripping into my mouth as I shouted, but I was so, so past caring.

'Max, listen to me!' Jeb called out, his face pale and worried.

Suddenly my shouts were cut off, Kate's hand coming down over my mouth as her other arm wrapped around me, stopping me from moving.

'Max, I'm sorry,' she said, her voice trembling slightly. 'From what you've said about Jeb I don't trust him anymore than you do. I'm not saying you need to listen to what he's saying or anything, but if you don't calm down – I know it sounds ridiculous and impossible right now – but if you don't calm down then you're going to hurt yourself.'

I kept pulling against her, unable to stop myself, needing a way to force out all of the pain-induced energy inside me. Jeb stood in front of us all, looking shaky and stricken, then slowly opened his mouth to talk.

'I need to talk to you. All of you.'

Iggy scoffed bitterly.

'Don't think that just because Kate's got Max that means you're safe,' he said, a cutting edge in his voice.

'I don't,' Jeb replied. 'I know how much you all hate me, and I know how much you've all been through. I'm aware that it was dangerous to come here alone, but there are some things you need to know. Things I couldn't say in front of anyone else. I have to talk to you.'

I struggled futilely in Kate's grip, trying to break away, and then Jeb turned to face me.

'Max,' he said. 'I need to speak with you about your mother.'

**A/N Again, don't hate me! The next chapter's gonna be at least partially in Fang's point of view, so this is definitely not the last we'll be hearing from him. Review!**


	20. Chapter 19

**A/N For those of you who'd already read chapter 19, I decided to split it into two chapters - it was about four thousand words long and contained a lot of new information, so I thought it would be better in two more manageable chunks. Hopefully it'll be easier to take in this way!**

Fang's heart pounded in his chest as he was escorted along the lifeless corridor. "_Lifeless". Yeah, great word choice there, considering where you're going._ It wasn't that he was afraid, exactly. He hadn't been afraid for himself since he was a kid, before they'd escaped from the School the first time; sure, he'd been scared for the others, multiple times in fact, but a long time ago he'd decided that fear wasn't something he could indulge in. It was too much of a luxury, to be afraid – it took up energy and addled your thoughts and all-in-all made you suck more at the very moments you needed to just get on with things. So that's what he did: just got on with things. And this was something he'd had to do.

So no, it wasn't that he was afraid. But it wasn't like he _wanted_ to die, either. And if he had to die now then he'd really rather it wasn't to save Dylan. In a perfect world, he'd die on some island somewhere when he was in his nineties, with his family around him and no worries about psychotic scientists or vicious mutants. This was far from a perfect world – if there was anything to prove that it would be the look on Max's face when he'd stepped away from her. The way she grabbed his arm, her breath on his neck when he'd leaned in to whisper in her ear, her begging him not to go; she'd looked so lost, so helpless, that all he'd really wanted to do was pull her up into his arms and just hold her there, forever if he could. He hated the fact that he'd hurt her again – God, _again_ – but that was a short-term kind of thinking. When he'd looked away, when he'd sent his gaze across the rest of the group and his eyes had ended on Dylan, looking stunned and frozen by the wall, he'd known that he had to go through with his plan. He'd thought back to that awful talk with Max on the mountain, replayed the expression on her face and how broken she'd sounded because of everything he'd done… And he'd known that he wasn't what she needed. It wasn't one of those lame if-I-cant'-have-her-then-I-don't-want-to-live things, although the pain of having lost her still felt like it could be capable of killing him all by itself, but his reasoning went something like this: no matter how long the group could have hidden Dylan's identity from the whitecoat at the door, he eventually would've been picked out and taken away. And then Max would've lost a chance at being happy, maybe one of her last. As much as Fang hated the idea of her being with Dylan, he had to consider the fact that the guy could be good for her. Better than Fang himself. After everything he'd done wrong, all the times he'd hurt her, he'd realised that this was one last thing he could do to try and make amends. If Dylan stayed alive, then perhaps Max could be happy with him, and when it came to her happiness, "perhaps" was enough for Fang; _any_ chance he could give her was enough.

The idea that death was inevitable, that there was nothing he could do to stop it, should've made him feel angry, helpless, depressed, or at the very least slightly troubled, but it didn't; instead, he felt kind of liberated. The fact that he was doing this for a steadfast reason, that there was no question in his mind about it, helped too. The adrenaline pushing itself through his blood made him shake a little, but it also made him feel light. Kind of floaty. Fang grimaced slightly; 'floaty' was not a word that he would normally use. But messing around with the intricacies of language seemed incredibly pointless just minutes away from death, and anyhow, it definitely described the way he was feeling well enough. In a way it was like he wasn't really there; he wasn't being walked down a grey corridor by enhanced laser-toting kids and a nervous-looking scientist. Everything just seemed a bit not-real. It was a strange sensation, one that Fang guessed you would only ever really experience at a moment like this one; the notion that everything was completely out of your hands, you had no responsibility for anything anymore, nothing you did mattered. _Except that what I'm doing now matters. _This _matters. It's _all_ that matters at this point; when everything else stops being important, the things you're left with become your whole world. _And_ I'm doing it for Max. So yes, this matters._

He was pulled out of his thoughts by the voice of the whitecoat scurrying along in front of him.

'Your retirement has been scheduled to take place in two hours' time. Until then we have been given permission to run some final tests.'

Fang kept his face blank, staring at the man until he made a small sound of distress and turned back to face the front of their small cohort.

Did this change things? Did it make him feel any different now that death was hours away rather than minutes? Or that he was most likely going to be put through a whole world of pain before he died? Somehow Fang didn't think it did. He was still going to die, and he'd done pain before. To use situation-appropriate wording, he'd done pain to death. Max lived by that saying of hers – 'pain is merely a message,' she'd always said. 'You can ignore it if you try hard enough' –and it seemed to work for her. But Fang's way was different: he didn't fight it, didn't try to block it out. When he was hurt, when his body was screaming at him on all fronts, he embraced it, accepted it for what it was, and worked _through_ it, not around it.

Fifteen minutes later, that was just what he was doing. It took a hell of a lot of concentration to open himself up to it when instinct said to fight, but he was managing. When the cool bite of the knives, not nearly as careful as they used to be now that he was slated for extermination, came calling as they cut into his back, he let the pain wash over him. Every muscle in his body was tense – that was a physical reaction he couldn't control – but slowly, as time went by, the timbre of the pain seemed to change. It seemed to turn into the kind of deep, dull burn that Fang had become used to; still aching but much easier to deal with. He was breathing deep, focussing hard on holding that sensation, when a cry from the hallway rang out as another experiment was taken past the theatre he was in. He lost his grip on the pain, giving a shout as the sharp stabbing took over, but that was suddenly far from the first thing on his mind.

Because, as impossible as it seemed that he could be hearing it now, he'd heard that cry before.

That cry had wedged itself into his brain, because it was something that he'd always been listening out for during fights, to make sure that if anything was hurting her then he'd be right there, keeping her safe.

He knew that cry.

_Angel?_

* * *

'Things aren't the way you think they are.'

I laughed bitterly at Jeb's words.

'Of course not. They never are, are they? Because all we are is a game to you people. You like to throw all these challenges and riddles and contradictions our way, and see if you can make us dance. So what is it this time, huh? Come on, tell me. Tell me how the woman that was my mother isn't actually evil. Tell me how you're just trying to help us, how that's what you've been doing the whole time. Tell me that none of this is real, and that _unicorns_ exist and _cheese_ is actually our biggest enemy. Go on, Jeb, please; I'm dying to know how your latest fairy tale goes.'

He faltered, shaking his head and looking at the ground.

'I really wish you hadn't said that.'

'And why's that?' I spat at him.

'Because I _am_ about to tell you that your mother isn't evil, and I _am_ about to tell you that I've been trying to help you all along.'

If Kate's hand hadn't been lying loosely on my shoulder, waiting to clamp down as soon as I made any kind of move towards Jeb, he would've been on the ground by now. It had taken a while for me to calm down enough to sit opposite him and restrain myself from ripping his face off, but now all of us were on the floor, watching him as he tried to speak.

'I know, it's absurd to try and convince you that everything isn't the way it seems to be,' he said, reading my expression perfectly, 'but what I have to tell you changes everything.'

I snorted, my fists clenching and unclenching as I imagined them pummelling him to a pulp.

'Okay, lay it on me. I'm sure we could all use a laugh before we're taken off to die.'

Jeb flinched a little at that, then scratched at the back of his neck and looked up at us.

'So you all know now that all the things you've faced have been parts of the same whole. The Doomsday Group, Itexicon, everything originated from the first School. And each branch has a slightly different "specialty", as it were. Something it has a particular focus in.

'To understand all this you need to be aware that ever since it began, the organisation known as the School worked at two different kinds of alteration: those undergone before birth, and those undergone after birth. Generation 54 subjects-' He nodded towards me and the rest of the flock. '-were all pre-natal experiments, the DNA altered whilst the embryos were still in the womb. Later subjects such as the 77 th Generation-' He looked at Kate, Ratchet, Star, and Holden. '-were all made what they are now after birth. In the area of post-natal alteration there are two focusses that branches of the School explore: physical modification and mental adjustment. You've seen the effects of the latter already.'

'The Doomsdayers,' Holden said quietly, and Jeb nodded.

'Yes, the Doomsday Group has been around for much longer than you're aware, but until recently it was very much an underground operation. It's the branch of the School that deals with research into psychological conversions – making people do things they don't want to do, causing them to believe they're someone else, creating false memories and erasing real ones. They play around with hypnosis, Pavlovian conditioning, subliminal messaging, neurological regulation… In short, mind control.'

'This is totally fascinating and all, but what does it have to do with anything?' I asked, making my voice sound bored.

Jeb looked straight at me.

'It's got _everything_ to do with _everything_, Max. Your mother was one of the Doomsday Group's first test subjects. Arguably their most successful, depending on how you define it.'

**A/N And onto the next chapter! It's been said that the info here is a lot to take in, so here's your chance to have a break before reading the next part of Jeb's story. :P Let me know what you think of it so far.**


	21. Chapter 20

**A/N And Part II of Jeb's side of things. Hope that it's easier to read split up into two sections!**

I'll admit, that threw me. For a split-second, I almost forgot that I hated the man in front of me, that I wanted to hurt him in ways he couldn't even begin to imagine. He took advantage of my momentary speechlessness, moving straight on with his explanation...

'It was all because of you really, Max. Valencia thought she knew what she was doing when she donated the egg that made you; she understood what it was going to be used for, what was going to happen to the child created from her DNA. But soon after the donation was made, she changed her mind. I think that the reality of it all, the fact that it was actually happening, made her realise it wasn't something she wanted to be a part of. So she requested that the School found a new donor. They refused – they didn't want to involve any more people than was absolutely necessary in the process, which was top secret even within the organisation at the time. Your mother-' Jeb sighed, his eyes closing briefly. 'Your mother told the people in charge of the experiment that if they didn't strike her from the procedure and destroy her donation then she'd expose them, take them to court and have everyone involved in the organisation behind bars. They responded, saying that she was under contract with the School, meaning that any action she took against them would condemn her too. It silenced her for a few days at the most. The last time I spoke to her as the Valencia I knew, she seemed so determined, so unconcerned about her own future; all she wanted was to make sure that she never helped create something that would be put through so much pain.' He gave a sad little chuckle. 'You're just like she was.'

I was lost by this point, and that kind of made me want to lay a good fist into Jeb's face even more. _Is he ever going to stop playing with us?_

'So what happened after that?' Apparently Nudge didn't share my frustration, curious to hear the rest of the story. I let out a low growl and tried to stand, to walk away from this stupid talk and bang my head against the wall or something, but Kate held me down, her eyes on Jeb as he started speaking again.

'She went back to the School, saying she didn't care what happened to her and that she was going to reveal them if they didn't destroy her donation then and there. I didn't see her for ages after that. I asked what had happened to her, begged for them to tell me where she was, but I never got an answer, and soon it became clear that if I kept digging then I'd disappear too. So I kept quiet, praying that she was alright.

'She turned up again weeks later, apparently unhurt and working just as she always had. But there was something different about her; she wasn't fighting the School anymore, didn't show any of the discomfort at the things they did that she had done before. It wasn't right. I stayed close to her, trying to figure out what had happened to change her mind so completely, but she never gave me any clues. It wasn't until later that I realised they'd used their own newly-developed techniques on her, playing with her mind until she was convinced that there was nothing wrong within the organisation. They bent her morals, her memories, all the things that had made her such an amazing person before. She didn't joke anymore. She'd lost the kindness she'd always had. We'd been very close friends.'

I wanted to scoff at it all, make some sarcastic comment and shrug it off as just another lie, but there was a sorrow in Jeb's eyes that seemed so real…

'Hypnosis. Altering personalities. It all sounds so sci-fi,' I said, trying for derisive and not quite making it.

Jeb looked at me sadly, holding his hands out, gesturing around us.

'Isn't that what this all is?' he said simply.

I bit my tongue, clenching down hard and hoping that the pain might keep me grounded, somehow. I hated the part of me that was hanging on his every word, the part of me that had pricked up its ears like some kind of lost puppy when he started talking about my mother _not_ being an evil maniac.

'Who's pulling the strings, then? I thought she was "The General", in charge of this whole thing. Who's controlling her?' I challenged.

Jeb gave a big sigh, screwing up his face.

'This is where things start to get a little complicated. The methods they used on your mother were the same as those they've been using on the children involved in the recent Doomsday Group movements, but back then they had no idea how to control what they'd done. They realised too late that they'd created someone who believed far too strongly in the organisation and what it did. Valencia kept her determination and extraordinary intelligence, only now she put it all into overthrowing the person who held the position of The General at the time. Like Frankenstein's monster, she turned on her creators, taking the position of power before anyone really realised what was happening.

'It was then that she formed her plan for you and what would later become your flock, Max. I believe she already told you her side of it all, but the way things happened at my end were a little different. When she made me her deputy, as it were, I wanted to decline. I wanted to escape from this place and get away from the thing that my friend had been turned into. But I couldn't; I had to stay by her. I thought that if I remained within the organisation, I'd one day be able to find a way to undo everything they'd done to her and bring her back. Then, as you grew up, I realised that being inside the School also meant I could help you in ways I'd never be able to manage without the information I was given as your mother's collaborator. It was difficult trying to support you and keep you safe without your mother noticing, especially once I was ordered to disappear from the house in Colorado, but I did the best that I could. When possible, I sent you messages as the Voice to push you in the safest direction.' He sighed. 'I understand that everything was very back and forth; I know it looked like my loyalties were constantly changing, but I had to keep up the front when your mother was observing me.'

Everyone sat quietly, all frowning as we tried to assimilate what Jeb had just told us. His words explained why the Voice always seemed to give such mixed messages, changing its mind about what I should do and where I should go and how "well" I was doing.

'So what you're saying – what you're telling us – is that my mother is a good person who's been made into a bad person who in turn was pretending to be good until today?' I asked, trying to get my head around the whole thing. If this was all a plan of his to get us well and truly confused, he'd done very well indeed; I'd pushed all my rage at him down in order to try and make sense of everything he'd said.

Jeb took a moment to think about my question, then nodded.

'That is so twisted,' Star muttered. I had to agree.

'If all this is true,' I started slowly, making sure he knew that I wasn't ready to believe everything he said quite yet. 'If all this is true then what does me saving the world have to do with anything?'

'If you asked your mother that, she would say that it no longer has any meaning. To her, the idea was always that you would lead the new world of altered humans once all the normal people had been eliminated. That much of what we told you before was true. Now it's been decided that you're no longer suited to the job, and therefore your usefulness has reached its limit. My answer to your question is different.'

I knit my eyebrows together, looking at him warily.

'Go on.'

'The way I see it, your mother and the organisation she runs are the biggest threat that currently exists to the world as we know it. If she isn't stopped, I can guarantee to you that her plan for the Earth and the human race will succeed. Your destiny to save the world never lay in your abilities or your soul or your fame. All of that was an attempt to wrap you tighter around the organisation's finger. The key to all of this isn't in who you are, so much as-'

'So much as who my mother is,' I finished, suddenly understanding where he was going.

'That's it,' he agreed.

'I get it,' Holden pitched in. 'When the child of The General learned about what had happened to their mother, they'd have been given a more personal reason than anyone else had to stop her and her work… By trying to save her.'

'Exactly,' Jeb nodded. 'That's where your power lies, Max. That's your incentive: if you save Valencia Martinez, if you bring her back, you will have saved the world.'

I shook my head hard, feeling like my brain was gummed up with this whole new twist on everything that had happened.

'So what about the One Light, then? I thought that was the big deal within the Doomsday Group. I thought _that_ was what was running the threat.'

Jeb nodded again.

'Max, your mother is the head of everything. To those in the Doomsday Group, she _is_ the One Light.'

I didn't respond, my mind buzzing so much that I almost didn't hear Iggy's next words:

'You said that you stuck around here to try and find way to help her. What happened to that? If it's possible then wouldn't you be more likely to find the cure than anyone else?'

Everyone turned to Jeb for his response.

'I made some headway relatively early on, but came up against a wall that I haven't been able to get past.' He cleared his throat. 'A firewall, to be precise about it; all the information we need is held in the mainframe computer up on the top floor. I managed to find enough to know that the key to undoing the psychological alterations is in a certain highly-specified frequency, a tone that resonates as just the right pitch to reverse the effects. It works in a similar way to epileptic fits being brought on by the right kind of light.'

'We saw that in Paris!' Kate said suddenly, turning to Star. 'You made some kind of noise that snapped the Doomsday kids out of whatever trance they were in.'

Jeb nodded in agreement.

'Different processes of mental adjustment require different tones to nullify them. The one specific to Valencia's modifications is buried deep within the mainframe. I haven't been able to find it.'

'But she could,' Ratchet said, turning his gaze on Nudge. She squirmed a little as everyone looked at her, but her face was determined.

'I can try,' she said, tilting her chin up. 'If I can get to that computer, I can try.'

The group turned to me, waiting for some kind of direction. I rubbed my hands over my face, lifting my head to stare long and hard at Jeb. Did we really have anything to lose by believing him? We were stuck here anyway, probably all scheduled to be retired sometime soon, and if he _was_ telling the truth…

'Okay,' I said strongly, turning to gaze around at the group. 'Let's do this.'

**A/N And there it is. Stay tuned to see what they do next, and review to let me know what you thought!**


	22. Chapter 21

**A/N I actually managed to finish this one before the birds started singing outside - clearly I'm getting better at the whole 'not staying up all night' thing. Hope you like it!**

'What do you _mean_ "you don't know the way out"?' Gazzy shouted incredulously, his eyes wide as he looked at Jeb. 'I thought that was the whole point of you being here and telling us everything – you could break us out of this room so that we could go and save Dr Martinez!'

'Yeah, man, there is something kinda sketchy about all that. Like, are you sure you can't just walk us out the door past those surveillance guys? You've obviously got the gear,' Ratchet said, nodding towards Jeb's arm where his ID device must have been implanted.

'I'm able to come and visit you, yes. But any movement of subjects kept in such a high-security cell is monitored extremely carefully – anything I tell the team outside will be checked and cross-referenced back through all the databases to make sure it's been properly authorised. I'm afraid that if I tried to get you out then we wouldn't make it past that second door; only Valencia can give the order for you to be removed from here. '

Iggy sighed disappointedly.

'Yeah, she mentioned that before.'

'What are we meant to do, then?' Star demanded. 'We know what we need to get done, we've got a plan-… Actually, we don't have a plan at all. What exactly were we gonna do once we broke out of here?'

'We need to split into two groups – one to head for the mainframe, and one to find The General and apprehend her in some way. Then meet back at that first door we used to get in, fight our way out and boom. Done,' I said.

'Easy as that, huh?' said Star, one eyebrow raised.

'Well, can anyone think of anything else that needs doing?'

Everyone was silent, then Iggy's head suddenly jerked upwards, his pale eyes widening.

'Jeb,' he said, his voice urgent. 'Jeb, what happened to Ella? You'll know, you _must_ know!'

I felt a stab of guilt that I hadn't thought to ask about my sister but turned quickly to Jeb, waiting to see his answer.

'She's here, shut in a room on the other side of the complex, near the staff's living quarters.' He looked uncomfortable, cringing slightly as he spoke. 'Your mother said it was very important that Ella be kept safe and out of the way, so-'

'So you came in the middle of the night to where we were sleeping in the desert, and you took her!' Iggy shouted, his face twisting, hands clenching into fists.

Jeb closed his eyes, looking pained.

'Yes. But I assure you, she hasn't been hurt. She's being held in a room with full furnishings and getting meals delivered every day. I assure you, she isn't being treated like a prisoner.'

'Aside from the locked door, I'll bet,' I said cuttingly.

'Aside from the locked door,' Jeb agreed. 'She isn't a high-security captive, though – there are no guards stationed by the room. If you can reach it without raising the alarm, you'll be able to get her out fairly easily.'

If he'd thought that this would make us feel better, he had another think coming.

'So it _would_ be a totally straightforward rescue if it weren't for the fact that we're stuck in an _inescapable room_,' Iggy fumed as he stalked away from the rest of us, hitting a hand against the wall as he reached it and spinning himself around to slump heavily against it. I was surprised by how hard he was taking it; I mean, I'd realised that there was some lovey-dovey stuff going on between him and Ella (_cringe_ – seriously, that's my sister), but he looked really upset.

'Okay,' I said forcefully, pulling the group's attention back towards me, hoping that giving him a bit of space would help. 'So that's three groups we'll need: one to go to the control room, one to get The General, and one to get Ella.' I swallowed hard, suddenly feeling nervous as I turned back to Jeb. 'You don't think… I mean, is there any chance that Fang's still…?' _Alive._ I couldn't bring myself to say the word out loud; to say it would be to confirm that I knew there was a good chance he _wasn't_.

Jeb blinked, looking confused.

'Fang…' he said under his breath, his gaze skimming around the room, eyes widening when they landed on Dylan as if he'd only just noticed that he was there. 'Dylan, what are you doing here? What happened? You were down for extermination. And Fang…?' He shook his head, unable to work out what had happened. In a way I didn't blame him – I'd _seen_ it and there was still a part of me that couldn't believe it.

'They came to take Dylan but the whitecoat they sent didn't know who was who,' I managed to get out, the muscles in my face straining against the words as if they were some kind of poison I was being forced to ingest. I tried to keep going, to tell Jeb what Fang had done, but my throat closed up at that point. It didn't matter though; he knew what I meant.

'Fang gave himself up as Dylan,' he said softly, and I could practically see the gears turning in his head. I nodded mutely, then heard Nudge's voice coming from behind me:

'Could he still be alive, then?' she asked quietly, looking scared of what Jeb might say. I totally understood – I had my whole attention focussed on him at that moment, watching his eyebrows knit as he worked through the different outcomes, wanting him to just spit out the answer already… but not wanting to hear it if the answer was a bad one.

'It's possible,' he said finally, and I just barely stopped myself from making an audible sound of utter relief. It wasn't much, but it was a lifeline, a lifeline for Fang.

'So… What? How could…?' I struggled with the words, not quite managing to find the ones I needed.

'Valencia mentioned that she was ordering Dylan's retirement,' Jeb explained quickly, his hands coming up to gesture in front of him. 'She gives the orders, but she's too high up to oversee everything that happens personally, so some of that falls to me; she gave me the task of scheduling the, ah, _appointment_. It wouldn't have gone unnoticed if I'd failed to do anything, but I tried to give Dylan the time to escape once he'd been taken out of this room – I arranged it so that retrieval from here would be scheduled for two hours before the actual process of retirement was due to take place.' He must have seen the hope in our eyes, because he quickly twisted his hands so that the palms were facing us. 'That doesn't mean he's definitely still alive – Valencia might have noticed the schedule and had it altered, the people in charge of retirement might have gone ahead and done it straight away… Just… Don't count on it too much. In fact, it might be better if you didn't count on it at all.'

_Too late_, I thought.

'Where would he be?' Gazzy jumped in. 'If he was still alive, where would he be?'

Jeb looked worried, and I knew he thought we were pinning too many hopes on the slim chance that Fang might not have been killed yet.

'They'd have taken him to the main testing area, either for some final experimentation or to be held in the corridor with all the other subjects being prepared for retirement.' He grimaced. 'Amongst the staff it's known as "Death Row".'

'The testing area... Not those rooms we came past on the way here?' Kate frowned.

'No,' Jeb replied. 'Those are just a few rooms used for short procedures or emergency surgery on the subjects situated in Holds 1 to 20. The main testing space is upstairs, taking up the whole of the floor above us. If Fang's still alive, that's where he'll be.'

I inhaled deeply, pushing back the light-headedness I was feeling.

'Right, so that takes us up to splitting into four groups,' I said, looking around at the group. 'If everyone-… Iggy? What's up?'

I'd been expecting to see Iggy hunched unhappily against the wall the way he had been a few minutes ago, but instead he was frowning in perplexity, holding his hands out in front of him, reaching up to touch his hair. At my words, he turned his head in my direction, his face taking on an expression of slow realisation.

'There's air coming in,' he said, standing perfectly motionless as if listening or waiting for something. My forehead wrinkled in confusion, and I glanced around at the rest of the group; they all looked just as mystified as I did.

'Um, what do you mean, Ig?' I asked carefully. He tilted his face upwards, his movements all sudden and jerky, like he had just thought of each one a split-second before doing it.

'There's air coming in,' he repeated, giving a small laugh of astonishment. His head snapped down to face us all again, and he must have felt the weight of our stares because he stepped forwards, moving towards us excitedly, waiting for us to catch on.

When none of us gave the shout of understanding that he was looking for, he threw his hands up in exasperation.

'Okay, so we're stuck in a big, soundproofed, reinforced room, right? There have been at least nine of us in here at any one point, moving and talking and using up oxygen for, what, a good few hours now? How much air do you think this room holds? Not _that_ much, I'd guess. Not enough to supply a group of pent-up mutants with increased respiratory rates!'

Dylan gave a small '_oh!_' as he realised what Iggy meant, earning him an eager nod.

'Yes! There's got to be air coming in from somewhere, and I don't know about you guys, but I'm guessing it's not through the vacuum seal on that door.' Iggy walked back to his spot on the wall, lifting his head towards the ceiling again. 'At first I thought I was just imagining it – y'know, I thought it was just my brain wanting to be up in the sky and feeling the wind and all – but there is definitely air coming from up there. It's faint, really faint. But it's there.'

I strode forwards to join Iggy by the wall, and he shifted slightly, letting me stand where he had stood. I closed my eyes and went dead still, feeling as hard as I could for the slightest breeze. I couldn't feel anything, but Iggy's sense of touch seriously outclassed my own. Opening my eyes, I stared straight upwards, tilting my head right back. For a moment all I saw was the white of the ceiling, but then something caught my gaze; a tiny movement, high up on the wall. I shifted to try and get a better view, and whatever it was moved again.

'Ratchet,' I said sharply, looking over at him. 'Can you see anything up there?'

He squinted at the wall, even going so far as to pull his sunglasses down to maximise the effects of his super-sight.

'Nothing whatsoever,' he said after a few moments.

I nodded.

'Right, now come stand here and look up.'

He moved forwards, doing exactly as I had done, and when he tilted his head back he gave a low whistle.

'What? What is it?' demanded Nudge, her eyes wide.

'There's something up there,' Ratchet said. 'It's just a tiny sliver, but I can see a bit of my reflection. There's something reflective sticking out of the wall.'

Without saying anything else, I pushed off hard from the floor and snapped out my wings, forcing myself into the space above the group. I watched the wall closely as I moved upwards, and as I neared the ceiling, I was suddenly looking at my own face; my reflection. Pushing myself forwards, I reached out to feel around it, laughing out loud when I realised what it was.

'It's like a box!' I called out, looking down at the upturned faces below me. It was as if some kind of square manhole cover made out of mirrors was protruding slightly from the wall. It was maybe a metre squared in area, facing the opposite wall straight on, so whilst I could see it easily from up here at this angle, it was too high up for anyone on the floor to accidentally be caught in it. In terms of thickness, though, its mirrored edge stuck out from the wall by only a few measly centimetres, which meant that to spot it from below, you had to be standing in just the right position and looking straight up to catch the smallest glimpse of your own reflection. Unless you were gazing directly at one of the planes of the box, head on to one of its surfaces, all you saw was the unbroken whiteness of the rest of the room reflected off the mirrors, making it as good as invisible.

Which really did beg the question, _what was behind it?_

I wasn't about to hesitate to find out. Pedalling backwards a bit, I threw a foot right into the face of my reflection, shattering the mirror. I grinned when I saw what it had been hiding and dropped back down to tell the rest of the group.

'Score!' yelled Gazzy, pumping a fist into the air.

'Nice catch, dude,' Ratchet said with a laugh as he slapped Iggy on the back.

I nodded, smiling. _A vent_, I thought. _Now _that's _something we can work with._

**A/N Had a slightly tricky time of translating the picture of the mirrored cover I had in my head into words, but I've changed up the description a bit and I hope that makes it clearer! Basically the cover of the vent is made out of mirrors, rendering it invisible. :P Let me know what you thought!**


	23. Chapter 22

**A/N There's a bit of physics-y stuff in this one about how something Jeb gives Ratchet works. I think I explained it in a way that means it can be understood alright, but let me know if I didn't!**

I had to admit that being back in a vent, crawling on my hands and knees through the small space, felt really good. It was a bit of a signature move for the flock, and to be pulling it again now was strangely comforting after all of the new stuff that had been thrown at us today. We stayed as silent as we could – it wouldn't really be the most elegant of break-outs if we got caught because some unsuspecting whitecoat suddenly started hearing voices coming from above them – but eventually the quiet seemed to get to Nudge.

'What I don't get,' she whispered from a few places behind me in the line of crawlers, 'is how they didn't think of putting more security around that opening. I mean, the rest of the room was so, like, rock solid and everything, you'd think that they'd be paranoid enough to make sure there wasn't something stupid like a _vent_ for us to escape through.'

'They wanted the pleasure of killing us themselves,' I breathed back. 'They weren't about to let us die from random asphyxiation because the room wasn't properly ventilated. Besides, you heard what The General said: 'scientists are always very proud when it comes to their work', or something like that. I guess they got a bit _too_ proud, thought that their mirror cloaking would stop us from ever finding the opening.'

'They didn't count on Iggy,' I heard the Gasman say faintly from further back down the line.

'No, they didn't,' I agreed, pausing when I looked back at the group behind me and saw Ratchet grimacing. 'What's wrong?'

'That sound's coming in again. I think the vent must be dampening it, but it's gotta open up somewhere and the noise is carrying down the shaft. Not gonna lie, it's starting to get a bit too loud for my liking.'

At the back of the line, Jeb made a small sound, like he was annoyed at himself.

'How did I forget that?' he muttered under his breath. He sat back on his heels as best he could in the limited space, hunching a little to make sure he didn't hit his head on the ceiling of the vent, then went digging around in his pockets with a few incoherent mumbles. Eventually he gave a slight 'ha!' of triumph, pulling out what looked like two… what, tiny mushrooms or something?

'Wha-?' began Kate, but Jeb cut her off.

'Earplugs. They should help.'

Ratchet looked at him like 'seriously?'.

'Um, thanks and all, Doc, but I'm kinda packing a bit more heavy duty than that.' He gestured to his headphones. 'If these aren't working, those things sure as hell won't.'

Jeb shook his head, holding the earplugs out insistently towards Ratchet.

'These ones will,' he whispered. 'You're not the only subject within the School who has enhanced hearing. That is, you may have been the most successful in terms of the distance at which you can hear different sounds, but there are multiple other experiments currently underway which look into frequency ranges specifically; there's a cat hybrid, a dog one, there are at least three children upstairs who've been given the ability to hear frequencies nearing those at the top end of a bat's range.' He shook his head sadly. 'When the new measures against you were put in place, it made normal testing on these subjects close to impossible – they couldn't be communicated with in any way because they were so focussed on dealing with the pain caused by the sound. So these earplugs were quickly developed, and when I heard you were all being brought in I thought it couldn't hurt to have some on me, just in case. They act by sampling the wave of sound they're required to nullify, letting out a corresponding tone of equal frequency at just the right moment to phase the noise out. The two waves interfere with each other, causing complete destruction of both sounds.'

Ratchet looked at Jeb, his eyebrows raised.

'Dude,' he said in a low voice, 'you lost me somewhere around "these earplugs were quickly developed". Are you trying to tell me that if a noise is added to another noise, it makes both noises disappear?'

'If they're the _right_ noises, yes,' nodded Jeb. 'And what these do is _match up_ the noise they let out with the one you're hearing now. Just give them a try.'

Ratchet shrugged, looking thoroughly unconvinced.

'Might as well. Got nothing to lose, I suppose.'

Jeb held the earplugs in his fingers, pressing at the ends to activate them, then handed the small buds over to Ratchet, who winced when the protection of his headphones was lost as he removed them in order to reach his ears. As soon as he'd pushed the earplugs in, though, his face changed.

'Man,' he breathed. 'That's awesome.'

'And they won't stop him from hearing anything else?' I checked.

'Not at all,' said Jeb grinning. 'They only interfere with sounds of the specific frequency that they've set themselves to.'

'Absolute win,' murmured Ratchet, nodding happily as he snapped his headphones back on. 'What?' he demanded when he noticed all of us staring at him quizzically. 'You heard the man: they only get rid of the high-pitched noise, not any of the other things I can hear that you guys can't. I've still got super senses, even with the earplugs.'

Rolling my eyes, I twisted myself around and continued down the vent shaft. After what must've been about ten more minutes of crawling, we reached an opening in the shaft.

'Okay guys,' I breathed, turning back to face the others behind me. 'Four groups. Nudge, you need to get to the control room.' I looked at Jeb. 'Can you go with her?' He nodded, and I hoped that I was making the right choice trusting him with her. 'I'll go to find Ella; she'll need to see someone she knows-'

'I'm coming too,' Iggy interrupted, his voice a little loud.

'Shh!' I hissed, holding a finger up and then remembering that it didn't make a difference because he couldn't even see it. 'Alright, Iggy. And Gazzy, you come with us, too. So Iggy, Gazzy, and I will go to find Ella and get her out. Nudge and Jeb are heading to the control room. Star, Holden, can you two get up to the testing area? Set the other experiments loose – we don't want to leave them stuck here if it comes down to a firefight. That's your main goal, and if you can find Fang whilst you're there, then-' I stalled slightly and took a breath. 'Well, that would be good. Then the rest of you – Dylan, Kate, Ratchet – you guys need to find The General and apprehend her somehow.'

Everyone nodded, looking determined. I thought through my choices for the different groups. They all seemed to make sense: Iggy and I would be comforting for Ella to see after what had happened to her, and I wanted to keep Gazzy with me as the youngest member of the group left; Jeb knew where he was going and what needed to be found on the mainframe, and I hoped that he'd keep Nudge safe as she worked her magic; sending Star along with Holden to free the experiments meant that the job would get done quickly – the whole floor was a big space to cover – and, with any luck, the fact that they were both members of Fang's gang would give them some kind of drive to find him; Dylan, Ratchet, and Kate were a strong group, and whilst they all wanted to see The General brought down, none of them had strong enough attachments to her to let their emotions get the better of them (the way that, say, _I_ might if I was standing face-to-face with her).

I nodded to myself.

'Right, Jeb. Tell us where we need to go.'

* * *

'_Nudge and Jeb are heading to the control room…'_

Nudge panted slightly as she moved swiftly down the corridor. Not that it was hard work or anything, but everything inside her felt like a jumbled mess of nerves, twisting around and making her buzz with adrenaline – she needed the extra oxygen going around her system right now. Jeb walked beside her, his stride long against her smaller, quicker steps. Star and Holden followed behind them; both groups needed to get to higher floors in order to get their tasks done, so Jeb had told the other two to come with them and then split off at the second floor, leaving him and Nudge to carry on up to the next.

They reached a flight of stairs, climbing quickly.

'Through that door,' Jeb said to Star and Holden. 'There shouldn't be too much security hanging around – they don't expect the subjects up here to make too much trouble – but make sure anyone who spots you is properly incapacitated. The longer we can hold of the alarm going up, the better.'

Holden gave a sharp nod.

'Gottit. And meeting back at the exit in twenty minutes, tops.'

'Good luck!' whispered Nudge as the two of them turned and snuck a look through the window in the door. Then they slipped through it and out of sight, leaving her alone with Jeb. As they started climbing again, she couldn't help feeling a bit panicky; Jeb had always seemed so changeable when it came to whether or not they could trust him, and even though she knew that they had nothing to lose and everything to gain by listening to what he said now, she still felt uneasy with no one else around.

'Don't run,' Jeb warned as they walked through the door from the stairway. 'No one up here will think twice if they see me walking along with a subject, we're too far from the high-security areas for anyone to think too much of it. But if we go racing down the corridor then it'll look suspicious. Walk quickly, and look scared, like I'm taking you somewhere.'

He gripped her arm and set his face to a bored expression, and Nudge played along with the image, pulling half-heartedly against him and stumbling along as he ushered her speedily down the corridor.

Her mind was racing. Well, her mind was _always_ racing, really. She didn't know why, didn't know where it had come from, but for as long as she could remember she'd felt like there were way too many thoughts in her head. Angel always used to say that it sort of hurt to read Nudge's mind because it flicked so quickly from one thing to another; "a butterfly mind", she'd always called it. Nudge had liked that – butterflies were pretty and it kind of fit – but sometimes it seemed like all her thoughts were pressing against the inside of her head too hard, like they were bursting to escape.

That was when she had to let it all out, when the "Nudge Channel" had to turn on. She knew it annoyed the others and she _tried_ to stop, but there were times when she just couldn't help it. Everything she thought about just seemed so _interesting_ that she often forgot no one else really wanted to hear it. She liked being in her head when it was a normal day, playing around in the kitchen or chatting with the flock, but at times like these it got really difficult to deal with. Most of her thoughts weren't even _useful_ at the moment. If they'd all been super-clever, helpful thoughts then that would've been fine; instead, what she got was about ten percent good stuff, with the rest all just random trains jumping off each other and squiggling their way to absolutely nowhere helpful.

There were moments when she wondered if she was like this because of something the whitecoats had done when she was really little, but for the most part she'd just come to accept it as something that made her _Nudge._ And she had been getting better at controlling her mouth recently; maybe she was just growing up, but it was starting to feel just a _tiny_ bit easier to push away all the thoughts she didn't need and clear her mind a bit. Or, it when she was she was trying to be serious, at any rate. Any other time was fair game.

She tensed as a whitecoat appeared at the other end of the hallway, walking towards them. Jeb squeezed her arm slightly, telling her not to panic, and lifted his head to face the other scientist.

**A/N That's not really so much of a cliffie as I've done in the past, is it? Ah, well, doesn't really matter 'cause the next chapter's coming up right now!**


	24. Chapter 23

**A/N Just so you know, the timing's in all of this are gonna be important. It''ll be jumping between POVs for the next few chapters, so keeping up with the timing's will help y'all know how it all fits together with who's doing what and when. I've tried to state how many minutes have passed as much as possible!**

_Jeb squeezed her arm slightly, telling her not to panic, and lifted his head to face the other scientist_.

'Afternoon, Stellengard,' he said, and the whitecoat nodded her head back at him.

'Good day, Dr Batchelder. Another one for the aerial deck?' she asked, jerking her head towards Nudge.

'Indeed. If you'll excuse me, I'm in a hurry.'

'Of course, Dr Batchelder.'

The whitecoat moved away down the corridor, her heels clicking on the hard plastic floor. Nudge looked at Jeb, and he tilted his head down towards her.

'People listen when you're The General's second-in-command,' he said out of the corner of his mouth, giving her a small wink. She snorted despite her heart feeling like it was about to beat out of her chest from nervousness.

As they neared the control room, passing a few more people along the way, Jeb let go of her arm.

'Nudge. The room isn't going to be deserted. We need to take out whoever's in there quickly and quietly before they can set an alarm going or shout out to anyone else. You ready?'

She nodded, balling her fists up and trying to breathe slowly. Together, they rounded the corner and the door to the mainframe centre came into view. A man stood outside it, eyeing them as they approached and Jeb quickly put a hand on Nudge's back, making it look like he was pushing her along. He gave the guard a long-suffering look.

'Masterton, have you got your Taser with you just now? This one-' He gave Nudge a shake. '-is causing me trouble and I think she needs to be taught a lesson before she goes to the aerial deck.'

A horrible light came into the man's eyes and he leered down at Nudge, his hand going to a pouch on his belt.

'Yeah, I've got it,' he sniggered, handing a small black box over to Jeb and leaning back against the wall to watch.

'I really don't know what's been going on lately, but all the subjects have just been so-' Jeb broke off, moving faster than Nudge knew he _could_ move as he aimed the Taser straight at the guard and shot two small electrodes into his arm; the man shuddered for a second as the electricity flowed through him, and then Jeb landed a solid punch on his face so that he fell to the floor, unconscious.

'In, quick,' he whispered, opening the door as quietly as he could. Two people sat on wheeled chairs in front of the biggest computer unit Nudge had ever seen; multiple screens of various sizes covered the wall, controlled by a massive panel of keys and buttons spread out in front of them. The woman turned around when the door opened, standing up at the sight of Nudge and Jeb standing in the doorway. Her face was wary, and she tapped her colleague hard on the shoulder, making him turn too.

Firing the Taser a second time, Jeb immobilised the man as Nudge flung herself towards the woman, who was moving quickly towards a button on the wall that was presumably the alarm. Pulling her arm back, Nudge slammed her elbow against the woman's head, knocking her out and sending her crashing to the floor. When she turned around, Jeb had already picked up the man and started to haul him across the room towards the door. He paused when he saw Nudge staring.

'Don't forget who taught _you_ to fight,' he said, his eyes twinkling a bit. 'You start getting into the system; I'll hide these guys away.'

As he was dragging the woman from the room, a wailing noise started up, shrill and piercing: the alarm. Jeb dropped her just outside the door, springing back and pulling it shut.

'Nudge,' he said urgently, 'there's a lockdown option for this room, meaning it can't be opened from the outside.'

Her fingers skimmed across the keys, reading the ghosts of movements that were piled on top of one another, stretching back to days, weeks, months ago. The information poured into her brain, filling it up with keystrokes and passwords, and ten seconds later she'd found the codes for the lockdown; with a beeping sound, the door was sealed shut.

'How long has it been?' Nudge asked Jeb, her eyes fixed on the screen.

'Ten minutes,' he replied.

'Isn't there some kind of manual override to the alarm system?' she asked anxiously, mentally searching through the reams of data and facts that she'd just acquired, finding nothing.

'No,' Jeb grimaced. 'The alarm system is set so that it can only be turned off at the location where it was activated. Besides, everyone will be on the alert now; I'm not sure turning it off would make any kind of difference.'

Nudge nodded as her fingers drilled at the keys in front of her. It was frustrating because some of the buttons she needed were placed way over at the other side of the unit, meaning she had to zip back and forth on the wheels of the chair. She pulled up the surveillance cameras, and the whole left-hand side of the wall began to flicker with the movements of people all across the School. In the back of her mind, Nudge registered how cool all of it was – she could see _everything_. Then, among the screens, she picked out Dylan, Ratchet, and Kate trying to make their way down a corridor. They were having very little success because Ratchet was, for what felt like the hundredth time today, staggering with his hands over his ears.

'The alarm's too much for him,' she muttered, her mind searching desperately for a way to help him; if he couldn't move properly then that group's chances of getting caught shot way up.

_Come on. How can you help him? You can't turn off the alarm, so find a way to help him deal with it. He's got those earplugs hasn't he? Why doesn't he use them? Ah, but they can only be used for one sound at a time, can't they? Hm… One sound at a time, huh?_

Nudge pounded at the keyboard, making her way through walls of coding until she found what she wanted. Tapping one last key, she watched the screen in front of her flick from 'ON' to 'OFF' as the debilitating high-frequency tone that had been set for Ratchet's arrival was inactivated. She whipped back to the screen that showed his group; if she had understood Jeb's explanation of the earplugs correctly, Ratchet should now be hearing both the alarm and the sound from the plugs themselves that had originally been cancelling out the first noise. He spasmed slightly as the sound in his ears intensified, then seemed to realise what had happened, his hands moving up to wrench off his headphones and pull the buds out of his ears. Pressing the ends just as Jeb had done, Ratchet reinserted the earplugs and instantly relaxed. Nudge grinned. It had worked just as she'd hoped; getting rid of the high-frequency tone had meant that Ratchet could use the earplugs to cancel out the sound of the alarm instead.

'Time?' she asked Jeb, her eyes fixed on the screen as she went back to looking for the files that would save Dr Martinez.

'Just over eleven minutes gone,' he replied, and she nodded, her hands moving even faster. If they were going to get back in time to meet the others, she was going to have to hurry.

Not two minutes later, a resounding _bang_ shook the floor.

* * *

'_Star, Holden, can you two get up to the testing area? Set the other experiments loose…'_

Holden reached up to unlock another cage, checking his watch quickly as he did so. _Eight gone, twelve left until we're meant to be at the door_. The creature in the cage in front of him huddled in a corner, pulling away from his hands as he reached in.

'It's okay,' he said softly, trying his best to sooth it. 'You're alright, we're getting you out.'

So far all the experiments he'd set free had taken a few moments to adjust, then made a break for it, blending into the walls, leaping from the window, swinging out onto the outside wall of the building and sliding down the smooth surface like crazy Spiderman people. This one suddenly flung itself forwards at him, flying past as he dodged out of its way; with a speed to rival Star's, it shot across the room and disappeared out of the door.

He was reaching for the next cage when a voice rang out behind him.

'You still in here?' Star mocked.

'I am,' Holden replied calmly, moving to the side as something that didn't even look human slithered from the cage, making its way up the wall and squeezing with a squelch through the grills of the vent.

'Gross,' muttered Star. 'Why are we even bothering to free them all, anyway? They'll probably just get hurt or recaptured or something. And what if someone sees them and raises the alarm?'

'We can't save them all, but we're giving them a chance,' he said.

Star didn't respond for a moment, then:

'I did all the other rooms. Knocked out the whitecoats before they even knew I was there and unlocked all the cages. Some of the things I let out could barely move. They're not gonna survive.'

Holden sighed sadly, opening the next cage. Clearly he had been lucky, getting a room where all the subjects were mobile and able to do _something_ to escape.

'Like I said,' he whispered, hating himself for it, 'we can't save them all.' He turned slightly, looking at Star. 'Speaking of saving people… Any luck?'

It was a stupid question, really; if Star _had_ found Fang then he'd be with her, wouldn't he? But for once she didn't take the opportunity to ridicule Holden's words, shaking her head regretfully.

'Nothing.' Her voice was quiet.

That was when the alarm rang out. Holden flashed a look at his watch. _Ten gone._

In an instant, Star had zipped around the remaining cages, flinging them all open. Experiments rocketed out, all leaving the room in their own way, desperate to escape the loud noise. One remained in its cage, hands that looked like flippers held over its ears.

'Get out of here,' Star said urgently. 'Move, that way, go!'

The creature picked its way out of the cage, lumbering clumsily on all webbed fours towards the door. When it reached the hallway, however, it came tripping back twice as fast as it had left.

'What? What _is_ it?' demanded Star exasperatedly. Not expecting a verbal reply, she jumped a little when the thing spoke back – albeit with difficulty – in a low, melodic voice:

'Guards coming. Laser heads. Hurt us before. Our guards.'

Star sent a disturbed, worried look over at Holden; the 77.31 kids were coming down the hall.

**A/N Okay, so that _was_ a cliffie. Two, in fact. You should expect a lot more coming. :P Review!**


	25. Chapter 24

**A/N Another long chapter, here! Would like to say a massive public thanks to xXjaziXx for her shout-out for this story in A Boy, a Girl, and a Sister. Check that one out - it's got a ton of awesome reviews and it's such an original story (with much Fax later on :D). Now, on with the chapter. I hope you'll enjoy this; you've all been saying you want to know what's happening with Fang, and so you shall!**

'_Dylan, Kate, Ratchet – you guys need to find The General and apprehend her somehow…'_

The group raced through the corridors, knowing that stealth wasn't going to help them. They couldn't evade the whitecoats, so their best bet was to get to The General as quickly as they could, laying out anyone who got in their way.

'Two around the corner,' Ratchet hissed, slowing a little; as fast as they were going, the element of surprise was crucial to make sure any threats were neutralised before more attention could be drawn to the group. They moved towards the end of the corridor, listening hard for the approaching whitecoats. The scientists reached the corner, turning unsuspectingly into the hallway only to be met with swift blows to the head; they dropped instantly, the attack coming so quickly that they didn't have a chance to identify the source before being knocked out cold. After their first few encounters with whitecoats, Dylan, Kate, and Ratchet had worked out the quickest ways to render their opponents unconscious, giving them no time to call out and alert others nearby.

Kate bent down, slinging the limp bodies over her shoulder.

'Where to?' she said briskly. Ratchet moved forwards to take the lead, directing the group to a door going off the hallway.

'No sound coming from in there,' he whispered. Pushing the door open slowly, he peered into the darkened room before nodding. 'No one inside.'

Laying the unconscious whitecoats on the floor, Kate paused in the doorway.

'Someone's gonna find them eventually,' she said. 'Or any of the others. The rooms might not be being used right now, but someone will need them at some point.'

Dylan nodded.

'Yep. We just have to hope that that point doesn't come too soon. It's the best we can do. Besides-' He glanced up at the clock on the wall. '-we've been going for nearly ten minutes now and nothing's gone wrong so far. That's almost half time, and if Jeb was telling the truth about where The General's office is then we should be nearly there. Once we're in there with her then it won't matter whether anyone's found the bodies or not – it'll be pretty obvious that we've escaped.'

They set off again, running through the hallways.

'What _does_ bother me, though,' Dylan said as they hurried along, 'is the fact that she said we're all being constantly tracked and monitored. Someone _must_ know that we've broken out, so why isn't anyone doing anything about it?'

'I thought Max was the only one they could actually watch directly,' Kate replied. 'The way it sounded, they could tap into her eyes and ears and stuff with that Voice thing, but for the rest of us it was just a kind of satellite pinpoint.'

'Even so, if that pinpoint was specific enough then they'd be able to see our movements within the building. And they must have noticed a spike in heart rates and adrenaline levels and all that. They must know _something's _going on.'

'Folks, what's the point in discussing this?' Ratchet interjected exasperatedly. 'Either way, we're doing what we're doing, and _they're_ doing what _they're_ doing, and we can't change that, so let's just get on with it.'

He saw the others nod out of the corner of his eye, and smirked in response. At that moment, a keening siren assaulted his ears, just about knocking him off his feet; he went stumbling into the wall, hands clutching uselessly at his head. Through the slits of his scrunched-up eyes, he could see the panicked expressions of the other two. They couldn't afford this, couldn't afford to stop and fail to reach The General and get caught and… Kate took hold of his arm, her eyes worried not just for the group in general but for _him_ specifically, and tugged him forwards. Ratchet's feet caught him, but only just; each step was halfway to a fall, only instinct stopping him from taking a faceplant. This close to The General's office there wouldn't be hoards of frantic staff members running around, but he was sure that they could count on security being drawn to the area where the organisation's most important person spent her time. They had perhaps a minute at most.

Ratchet wasn't sure how long it had been – he guessed at maybe thirty seconds, but when every moment felt like an hour of staggering pain it was hard to tell – but sometime after the alarm began he was hit by a second wave of sound, the two climbing on top of each other to form a noise that he could almost _see_ as a blinding, agonising light. _That doctor guy can rethink his theories – two sounds do _not _make silence. _Somewhere in his pain-addled mind, a connection sparked; if he was hearing that first high-pitched noise again, that had to mean that either the earplugs had stopped working (_please don't let the earplugs have stopped working_) or the tone being piped through the School had been turned off. One of the sounds had disappeared, leaving the other un-cancelled. Reaching up, hands shaking, Ratchet ripped his headphones off, feeling like his head would rip in two as his line of defence was removed. He pulled the earplugs from his ears, pressing them the way he'd seen Jeb do the first time, then pushed them back into place. At once the pressure in his head released – both sounds had disappeared. He didn't know why that first noise had been turned off, but he was too relieved to care. Now the plugs were keeping that awful alarm away from his ears, and that was good enough for him. He straightened up, ears still ringing, and faced the other two.

'Let's get going,' he said, not giving them a chance to reply before sprinting off down the corridor.

Guards appeared as they rounded the second corner, The General's office door visible to Ratchet at the other end of the hallway, and an ungraceful fray started up. As a group they covered a good range of fighting techniques, each of the three of them using a different style; Ratchet utilising the "foul play" that he'd picked up during his time on the streets, Dylan waiting until the last possible moment in his rival's attack before delivering clean, sharp counter-strikes, and Kate swinging out devastatingly strong blows which could take out more than one opponent at once when they landed right.

The guards, unable to keep up with the onslaught of such a mix of fighting styles, were all down within the minute, leaving the three teenagers to race along the hallway to The General's door. The alarm still blared around them; it could only be a matter of time before more guards showed up, and this time they were unlikely to be completely human.

The door facing the group was metal, like a vault hatch. There was no handle, no keypad lock, no slot for a swipe card.

'Kate, looks like this is one for you,' Dylan said, taking a step back.

Kate nodded, but before she had the chance to strike out at the door it slid upwards with a slight whooshing sound, revealing a normal, handled one behind it. She glanced back at the two boys, uneasy, but they'd come this far; no time to be too cautious, they just had to get into the office and face whatever was waiting for them as best they could.

The door swung open easily, and the three of them stepped inside, eyes landing immediately on the woman sitting on top of the desk at the other end of the room.

'Dylan, Kate, Ratchet,' The General said calmly, the gun in her hand pointed at the group as the metal door hissed down again behind them. 'At the risk of sounding like a clichéd movie villain, I've been waiting for you.'

* * *

_He knew that cry. __Angel?_

It was like torture waiting for the whitecoats to finish sewing up his back. If he'd been Max, he would've jumped down from the table and ploughed through the surgeons with still-open incisions. But he wasn't. He was Fang, and Fang was more logical about his actions. If he tried to escape and rescue Angel before the scalpel-wounds in his back had been closed up, he wouldn't make it very far before blood loss got him; he'd figured out that much way back, when the first, newly-resurrected Ari had taken a chunk out of his side and he'd practically fallen out of the sky a few minutes later.

So he lay there, feeling the sting of the needle as it stabbed into him again and again, pulling the edges of the cuts in his back together.

'How much longer do we have him for?' one of the whitecoats asked.

'About an hour,' replied another. 'Enough time for us to get him out the door and onto the aerial deck for a bit.'

'Is it free now?'

'That first one, the girl, is finishing up in about five minutes, I think.'

'And we'll be able to see the effects of the modifications straight away in this one's flight patterns? No worries about the stitching coming undone?'

'Shouldn't be. The muscles are laid in a very peculiar fashion, as you saw. There's a chance that the superficial stitches on the skin will pull, but the deeper ones should be held by the layering of the internal structures.' There was a sigh. 'You know, it's a shame that we're only allowed to use retiring subjects for early surgical investigations; if this one has worked then I'm going to be mighty pissed to see it going off to be destroyed.'

Fang heard instruments being laid down on the metal surgeon's tray, signalling the end of the procedure.

'Okay, get those straps undone and we'll take him next door.'

He braced himself, waiting, waiting for the first rip of thick Velcro restraints being unfastened before hitting out, knocking down the first whitecoat in a single blow. Reaching over, he tore open the strap that held down his other wrist, then twisted backwards to get access to the ones on his ankles. It was a difficult stretch and he cursed inside his head – getting out of these things whilst face-down on a table was so much more of a nuisance than doing it face-up. Pausing for a second to swing a hard punch at the second whitecoat, Fang finally managed to undo all the straps holding him down, and in one fluid movement he had rolled off the table and landed in a crouch on the floor. The stitches in his back tugged at his skin and he felt a slight wince cross his face, but he'd fought through worse before. Taking a split-second inventory of the room, he was mildly disappointed to see that the tray of surgical instruments had been removed as soon as the procedure was over; not the end of the world, but a weapon from there could've been very useful indeed.

The theatre he was in was a small one just off the aerial deck, only used for flight-modifying procedures and any emergency work required to fix injuries obtained during airborne tests, so there wasn't a full surgical team hanging around for Fang to get through; the whitecoat who had come to fetch him (or rather, come to fetch _Dylan_) had been met by the second guy outside the theatre, and the 77.31 subjects had disappeared once Fang was secured onto the table. It was clear that these two guys didn't hold a lot of authority in the School – neither was particularly well-informed, and by the sounds of it their ideas about flight modifications didn't have a lot of sway with the higher-ups.

Darting towards the door, Fang was about to burst through to the aerial deck when he heard a shuffling behind him, and turned just a fraction too late to see the first whitecoat pulling himself off the floor and thumping a fist down onto a small, red button by the X-ray equipment. Immediately a siren pierced the air, and Fang heard shouting erupt from the other side of the door. He threw his weight against it, not bothering to go back for the dazed-looking whitecoat who was now slumped against the wall, and suddenly he was on the aerial deck, looking out over a large room below the strip of balcony that ran along the wall. A second door was positioned at the end of the deck, leading out into the hallway that he'd been brought along on the way to the theatre.

For a split-second he almost didn't recognise Angel as she struggled desperately in the air against blasts of wind coming from a huge fan positioned at the end of the room; that tiny person couldn't possibly be her, with a bare scalp and small, weeping holes spaced across the curve of her head. But there was no mistaking the cries issuing from her as she fought against the fierce wind. It was Angel. Feeling rage well up inside him at what the School had done to that little girl, to _his_ little girl, Fang leapt forwards and laid into the aerial deck observers, who had turned to face him when he came through the door. Punch here, kick there, spin and bring up the knee as the turn finishes; the whitecoats weren't fighters, and Fang was fuelled by anger, not even feeling the pull of his stitches anymore. It didn't take long for him to get through all of them; one was sent over the edge of the balcony, falling a good thirty feet before he hit the floor. Fang didn't know if he was still alive or not, and in that moment he didn't care. Springing towards the railing that bordered the deck, he swung himself over it into the open space ahead, only to drop like a stone as his wings failed to push down properly.

He barely succeeded in catching himself, feeling clumsy and precarious in the air as he just about managed to propel himself forwards through the wind. Whatever those whitecoats had done to his wings, they didn't feel like his own anymore; he didn't recognise the way they worked, couldn't make them do as he wanted. But as he made the laborious, awkward journey towards the point where Angel still struggled, too trapped in her own world of exhaustion to have noticed anything going on in back of her, something seemed to shift: it was as if his brain caught up with the new configuration of muscles in his back, and then suddenly his movements became smoother. So smooth, in fact, that Fang actually had to take a quick glance behind him to check that his wings were still moving at all. They were. He quirked an eyebrow and turned back to Angel, powering through the powerful blast of air with a sudden ease that he'd never experienced before. _Well, what do you know? Seems like the School's actually been helpful for once. Must be having an off-day._

Within seconds Fang had reached Angel, reaching out towards her as she was buffeted around in the wind; she didn't fight, barely even responding to his hands pulling her out of the air and bundling her up against him. As he made his way back to the deck, the rush of the wind and the wail of the alarm in his ears, he looked down at the thin, fragile thing in his arms. A straining feeling started up in his chest and he instinctively tightened his hold on her, needing to feel her there, needing to know that he had her, that she was with him, that she was safe now.

He didn't know what he was going to do next. His plan hadn't really gone past 'get Angel, get out'. But now wasn't a time to think; it was a time to _do_. If he managed to get the two of them out of the School, then _that_ was when he could start to think about the others, but until then he had to focus on the task at hand. With that in mind, Fang reached the balcony and stepped over the still-unconscious bodies of the whitecoats, making his way through the second door and out into the hallway.

* * *

_Star sent a disturbed, worried look over at Holden; the 77.31 kids were coming down the hall…_

'Down here!' Holden ducked behind a metal cabinet that stood by the wall, motioning to Star to do the same.

'What do we do now?' she whispered, appearing next to him, her eyes watching the doorway. The small creature was just behind her, crouching on its heels, knees splayed outwards and webbed hands resting on the floor between its flipper-like feet; it looked like a small child doing a frog impression.

Holden stared around the room, eyes narrowed as he took in the surroundings. He could hear the footsteps of the 77.31 subjects now, what sounded like all five of them marching in unison down the hall together, loud enough to be audible over the siren that still rang through the building. His gaze landed on a pile of cylinders in the corner of the room furthest from the door, arranged haphazardly by a large stack of now-empty cages; a smile spread across his face when he saw the yellow label adorning the containers.

'The gas in those canisters is flammable,' he muttered quickly to Star, turning to face her. 'I'll distract the Laser Kids – they can't hurt me – then you move round behind them and get out of here. Take-' He looked at the flippered creature crouching behind them.

'Kokoe, say scientists,' the thing replied in its low voice.

'Take Kokoe. Once you're out, I can lure them over to that pile of cylinders; they'll shoot at me and hit the gas tanks, and the whole room will go up. They'll be blown to bits.'

Star frowned.

'That's very noble and all, but would you survive that? I get that you're a super-healing starfish guy, but can you get through being ripped apart? You'd be right at the centre of the blast.'

'I'll be fine.'

She rubbed at her face, shooting a look over her shoulder at the doorway. The footsteps were very close now, almost at the entrance to the room. Star whipped back around to face Holden, her face suddenly looking more uncertain and anxious than he'd ever seen it before.

'Kate would kill me if you-… She'd kill me if I let you die,' she ground out, not quite meeting his eyes.

Holden softened for a moment, bending his head a little to study her expression.

'You really love her, don't you?' he said gently, and Star's face crumpled. A sound at the door told them that the 77.31 subjects had arrived, and she wavered, looking lost for a second. Then she turned to him, and her voice was a quiet yet astonishingly fierce whisper:

'Can you do it? Honestly. Can you survive that?'

Holden looked at the floor, taking a fraction of a moment to think about what he was suggesting.

'Yes,' he murmured, looking up at her with a firm nod.

She stared at him for a second as the Laser Kids took a few steps into the room.

'Okay,' she said softly, and he could see her hands shaking a little.

'Wait until they're right inside, away from the door,' Holden breathed. 'Make sure they can't see you moving behind them; if they catch a glimpse of you, they'll turn and shoot.'

Then he burst out from the cover of the cabinet, drawing the aim of the lasers, racing around the room as dozens of small holes appeared in his skin only to heal up within second of the shots being fired. He moved in an arc, pulling the gaze of the subjects around until their backs were all to the cabinet, facing away from Star and Kokoe. He taunted them the whole while, his voice ringing out above the sound of the alarm, and the two noises together gave Star's light footsteps more than enough cover as she moved quickly out from behind the protection of the cabinet, silently urging Kokoe along with her. Reaching the door, she slipped into the hallway and stood there, pressed against the wall and on the alert for anyone else coming towards the room.

Holden saw Star leave, moving into what he hoped was the relative safety of the corridor, and he took a breath as he prepared himself for his next move. In what had become a near-automatic gesture since the groups had split off, he shot a look at his watch: _thirteen minutes down. Only about three gone since the alarm started._

It felt like much longer.

He sprang suddenly to the right, and the tiny darts of red light moved with him, following him as he sprinted towards the corner, following him as he jumped, following him as he rolled behind the stack of cylinders. For a split-second nothing happened, and he had a chance to pray that there was still gas in the tanks, that Star would be protected from the blast outside of the room, that he really _could_ survive it. And then he stopped praying, because suddenly Holden's world erupted in a burst of flames.

**A/N That bit about Star loving Kate can be interpreted either as romantic love or platonic - it's for you to decide within your own head, because I don't think there's going to be much more said about it. I just wanted to show that they're very close and that, despite how cold she can act sometimes, Star does truly care for Kate. **

**Now review, my lovelies, because I KNOW that people are reading this and not reviewing, which makes me sad. Writers need feedback! Plus I think that I'm generally fairly good at responding to it and making sure my readers are happy, so the more you let me know you're there then the more likely it is that you'll enjoy the way things go. **

**It's a win-win!**


	26. Chapter 25

**A/N Hello! I apologise for not having posted yesterday, but I was under the impression that I had dance classes on for the whole of today, so I thought I'd better get a good night's sleep. Then, of course, it turned out that I didn't have class. Which makes me sad, 'cause I like dancing... Anyways, here be the chapter!**

'_Just over eleven minutes gone,' he replied, and she nodded, her hands moving even faster. If they were going to get back in time to meet the others, she was going to have to hurry._

_Not two minutes later, a resounding _bang_ shook the floor._

Nudge's head snapped towards the surveillance monitors.

'What was _that_?' she asked, the confusion distracting her from her search through the School's database. High on the wall of screens, one of the displays had black and white dots fizzing across it, the same thing that always used to happen when the TV in the E-shaped house lost signal. Jeb came up behind Nudge, pointing towards another of the screens.

'There,' he said. 'That one's from the hallway outside that room.'

The camera was positioned on the wall opposite the doorway, facing into the room so that most of the back wall could be seen. The screen was bright with flames; flames which danced around, spreading further and further through the room as Nudge watched. Suddenly, something zipped through the fire from the doorway, speeding to the farthest corner and then immediately racing back again. Star appeared in the sliver of hallway that was within the camera's sights, looking unhurt by the flames – she must've moved too quickly for them to burn her. But her face was twisted in despair, and when she whizzed back into the room a second time, Nudge tried to track her movements, watching for the exact point where she turned around. Squinting, she tapped a few keys and transferred the image onto one of the larger screens that sat in front of her; now that it was bigger, she could make out a shape flailing in the corner, blocked off from the rest of the room by a cascade of large, empty cages which must have toppled over as a result of the explosion which had caused the fire. Nudge pushed her face even closer to the screen, trying to make out the shape. Was it human? Surely not. Who would it b-…

For a third time, Star entered the room, and now that the image was on a larger screen Nudge could see what was happening: Star was running in, racing along the length of fallen cages in an attempt to find an opening, then quickly getting out of the fire before it burned her. Nudge's stomach dropped.

'It's Holden!' she cried. 'It's Holden trapped in the fire!'

'Oh God…' breathed Jeb, peering over her shoulder at the screen.

'But he'll be alright, won't he? He can heal himself and everything, right?'

Jeb shook his head slowly, looking horrified, his eyes stuck on the screen.

'Regenerative capabilities can only work so quickly. Being trapped in a fire will mean that his body is constantly being damaged just as fast as it's healing. He'll be stuck in a state of flux until all of his energy is gone and he's no longer able to repair himself.'

'So what do I do?' Nudge shouted, tears starting in her eyes. 'What can I do? We need to help him!'

'Nudge, this is a control room, not a miracle-worker. You managed to help Ratchet, but you can't save everyone. You can't…' He trailed off, freezing as an idea came into his eyes.

'What? What is it?' Nudge's voice was desperate as she watched one of the new group members being burned alive. How long had it been? A minute? More? How long could Holden survive in there?

Jeb faltered, looking unsure of himself.

'Jeb! Tell me!' She had to do something, couldn't sit here and watch Holden die. Not caring, considered Holden with the kind face.

'Okay,' said Jeb, moving forwards to place his hands on the keyboard that Nudge had been using. His fingers tapped across the keys as he talked. 'All hybrid subjects are created with a certain amount of mutative potential. That is, there are multiple different capabilities or modifications available within the structure of the new DNA. A lot of these are programmed to remain dormant, but some can be reactivated; when the flock was made, some additional fragments of DNA from non-avian origins were included to provide even further potential. That's how you were given your various powers, and that's why a lot of them were above and beyond the abilities of any normal bird; it was never the case that you started mutating on your own.'

'Yes, The General told us that already!' Nudge cut in. 'But how is it meant to save Holden?'

'It might not. He's not a subject I've really worked with before, so I don't know what tricks he's got hidden in his genetic material. He won't have been fitted with anything more than what was already held in his starfish DNA, but maybe something there can help him. That's what I'm looking for now.'

'You think you might be able to activate a power to save him!' she exclaimed, suddenly understanding Jeb's words.

'With any luck…'

A profile opened up on a screen just to their right:

_Subject 77.20_

_Alias: Holden Squibb_

_Subject was brought to the School's attention in the year-_

'Not important,' muttered Jeb, searching through the page. 'Here.'

_Mutative capabilities_

_Enhanced positional sensitivity: inactive._

_[Actions: Activate. Delete.]_

_Restorative growth spanning all cell types: active._

_[Actions: No actions may be performed after activation.]_

_Full limb regeneration: active._

_[Actions: No actions may be performed after activation.]_

_Ossicle formation: inactive._

_[Actions: Activate. Delete.]_

_Extraction of oxygen for use in respiratory processes whilst underwater: active._

_[Actions: No actions may be performed after inactivation.]_

_Sequential hermaphroditism: inactive._

_[Actions: Activate. Delete.]_

_Scheduled spontaneous expiration: inactive._

_[Actions: Activate. Delete.]_

Nudge stared at the words in front of her, not really understanding what most of them meant, but Jeb gave a laugh of triumph, quickly drumming a command into the keyboard then sitting back.

'What did you do? What happened?' demanded Nudge, hitting a little at his shoulder in frustration.

In answer, he merely pointed at the screen, where the status of 'ossicle formation'now read 'active'.

'And? What does that even _mean_?'

'Ossicles are the bony plates that form the outer wall of a starfish's body,' Jeb explained, looking towards the monitor which still bore the camera stream from the hallway. A mixture of guards and Erasers had arrived on the scene, and Star was doing her best to fight them off alongside a small, leaping creature with webbed hands and feet. It was clear that she was trying to stay as close as possible to the burning room, even as the flames began to spread out into the hall. Nudge noticed that she still wasn't using her left arm.

'So they'll protect him from the fire?' she asked, hardly daring to hope that it could be true.

'Probably not completely – the arrangement of the plates is generally quite loose in nature, although I don't know exactly how the ability will manifest itself in a human experiment – but they should provide him with enough protection from the pain so that he's able to move properly and get himself out.'

They watched the screen, waiting. And then a shadowy, upright shape became visible through the flames, moving towards the doorway. It was good enough for Nudge.

'Yes!' she cheered, throwing her arms around Jeb's neck before she'd really thought about what she was doing. Over his shoulder, her gaze was drawn to Holden's still-open profile on the other screen. She straightened, suddenly taking in something that she hadn't before.

'What's wrong?'

'"Scheduled spontaneous expiration",' Nudge quoted, eyes skimming across the words. 'Is that another way of saying "expiration date"?'

'It is,' Jeb replied sadly.

'How much time do we have?'

'Less than five minutes. Why?'

Nudge waved him out of the way of the keyboard, her mind buzzing as her gaze fixed on that one word: delete.

'I think we're gonna be a bit late getting back to the others.'

* * *

'_Iggy, Gazzy, and I will go to find Ella and get her out…'_

I swung at a guard, knocking him out of the way as I ran down the corridor. This was the kind of thing that I was good at. Emotional sharing? Not so much. Fitting into normal society? Big no. Running for my life whilst fighting the evil underlings of my brainwashed mother? Sure, where do I sign?

Iggy ran alongside me, his hand brushing lightly against my jacket as we ran; the alarm that had started up a couple of minutes ago was making it difficult for him to listen as closely to the things around him as he usually would, meaning he needed that extra contact to make him feel secure about where we were going.

'Take a right!' I shouted to Gazzy, who was a few paces ahead of me; I wanted to make sure that I could see him, that I knew he was okay. He veered off to the right, speeding down the corridor that, if we were to trust Jeb's directions, would lead us to the room where Ella was being kept. As the door came into sight there were no guards in our way, but I could hear shouting in the hall behind us and knew that a good fight was going to go down on our way back to the meeting point. Speaking of, we really needed to get a move on – over half our time had gone, and we still hadn't freed Ella yet. _¡Ándele, genetically-altered freaks! ¡Ándele!_

We flew – in this case, not literally – towards the door, reaching it as those uniformed bozos came around the corner, running at us from the end of the hallway. I threw a kick at the door, knowing that it wouldn't work but feeling as though I needed to try all the same.

'Iggy, you're up,' I said, moving to the side. 'We'll hold the yobs off.'

He stepped forwards and crouched in front of the door, bringing out his set of picks. I didn't really want to think about where he must've hidden them to stop them getting whisked away when we were captured. I turned to face the advancing guards, ready to kick some ass whilst Iggy worked on the door, but then his voice rang out from behind me.

'Max.'

'Yep?' I said, eyes fixed ahead of me.

'Picking locks can be tricky when there isn't an actual lock on the door.'

'Huh?' I replied intelligently, moving forwards to chop the first guard that reached us in the side of the neck.

'He said "picking locks can be tri-"' Gazzy began, tripping another guy up so that he went sprawling across the floor and into the wall.

'Yeah, I got that, Gaz. Thanks. But Iggy, what do you mean?' _Bam_, another one down, _whack_, and another one down, _thump_, and another one bites the dust. Ha. Humans are so fragile.

'I _mean_ that there's no lock on this door. Or not one that I can pick, at any rate,' Iggy said wryly as Gazzy and I continued to knock guards down like flies. 'Seriously, how is it that the blind guy is the only one who seems to notice anything around here?'

I turned back to him as the last guy fell back into the wall with an _oomph_, and saw that he wasn't messing around; there was no pickable lock on that door. There wasn't even a handle. _Damn. Not really your proudest moment, Max._

'It probably has one of those weird things in the wall,' Gazzy offered, his small shoulders shrugging slightly. 'We can just borrow a guard's arm to open the door up, right?'

God, I love that kid.

It took us maybe half a minute of waving an unconscious man's arm in front of the wall before we managed to get the door open. I was just about to give up, to suggest that perhaps the guy didn't have the right clearance to get us into the room, when a red light flashed beneath the surface of the wall and the door slid sideways. Ella, who by the looks of it had been sitting against the far wall of the room, leapt forwards with her fists clenched, a fierce look on her face that anyone in the flock would've been proud of. Then she realised who it was and her eyes widened, her hands coming up to clap over her mouth.

'Max! Iggy!' she gasped through her fingers.

'Fine, I'll just leave, then,' Gazzy grumbled, hanging his head melodramatically as Iggy stepped towards my sister.

'Sorry. Hi, Gazzy,' Ella said, burying her head into Iggy's shoulder as he wrapped his arms around her. They stood like that for a moment, both of them just holding each other, and I didn't really know where to look.

'Hey,' I said, clearing my throat uncomfortably. 'Not that this isn't cute and all, but we kinda need to get going.'

They broke apart and Ella looked a little embarrassed as she moved towards the doorway. Then she inhaled sharply and her head snapped up towards me, panic in her face.

'Max, it's Mom. She did all this. It's Mom, she… It's…' Her breaths started to become quick and erratic, and I pulled her into a hard hug for a second before stepping back and bending a little, looking straight at her.

'It's not.' She opened her mouth to respond, but I carried on speaking before she could get the words out. 'I know that's what it seems like, I know that's how it looks, but it's not. Mom didn't do this. I mean, she _did_, but it wasn't her fault. I mean… Eugh, it's too much to explain right now. I'll tell you everything once we're away from this place, but just now we need to move, 'kay?'

She gulped a few times and I watched her force the panic down, feeling seriously proud of the way she was handling everything; this was still new to her, the being kidnapped and imprisoned and betrayed, but she was pushing it all aside and getting on with what she needed to do. I remembered Jeb talking about my mom before she was The General:

'_She seemed so determined… You're just like she was.'_

Looking at my sister at that moment, I decided it must run in the family.

'Right then,' I said, turning towards the hall. 'Let's get outta here.'

**A/N Seriously folks, if you've bothered to read this far into the story, it really won't take much more effort to review. Even if you just say 'I liked it/didn't like it' (although if you say that you didn't then it would be nice to know why so that I can look into it). But yeah, that would be enough. Just to give me that wee boost. :) Review and I'll give you hypothetical hugs.**


	27. Chapter 26

**A/N This was actually a really tricky one to write - I think it's because everything's starting to come together and they're getting to the end of their wee group numbers. *shrugs* Anyhow, here's chapter 26.**_  
_

_And then he stopped praying, because suddenly Holden's world erupted in a burst of flames._

Burning. That was all he knew. He was burning, and it was like a nightmare, because he'd known it would be something like this that killed him; he couldn't drown, couldn't die from a gunshot wound or a knife slash. But this could end him. The pain was more than he'd ever known – just because he healed quickly didn't mean that he couldn't feel the damage that was being done – and he couldn't move because of it. All his energy was going into regenerating the flesh that was being burnt off his bones, and if he could just get out of the fire then it would be fine, he'd heal up and be fighting fit within seconds, but he _couldn't_ get out of the fire because he _couldn't move_.

He wondered what he would look like to anyone watching. Not that there _was_ anyone watching; the only people around were Star and Kokoe, and he'd told them to get out, and even if they hadn't moved from just outside the doorway, they still wouldn't be able to get close enough to actually see him. That was probably a good thing – he reckoned it wasn't a pretty sight. He was stuck halfway between life and death, halfway between burning and healing. He could picture the image of his flesh continually being eaten away then growing back, his face like a melting mannequin's, his body writhing in the flames like some kind of grotesque, dying snake. The screams that tried to climb up and out of his throat were stifled as the fire jumped into his open mouth, momentarily burning him from the inside as well as the outside. He clenched his jaw closed, hunching over to try and protect his most important organs. He hadn't really believed in any kind of god since he was first brought into this world of experiments and laboratory tests and mutations, but he found himself praying, praying to any and every god he'd ever heard of to save him, or just let him die so that it would all stop.

Holden wondered what would get him first; the flames and the heat and the incinerating and the pain, or the smoke that was billowing around him, forcing its way into his lungs and making it hard to breathe. His body couldn't fight that. It could heal his lungs as they were damaged by the scorching gases around him, but it couldn't find oxygen where there was none, couldn't supply it to his muscles and organs as they fought to keep him alive. This was hell. This was what hell was. Every second was more than he could endure, but then the next second came and there was no relief, no respite.

Until suddenly, impossibly, there was.

He wasn't sure how long it had been – the passing of time had kind of come second to dealing with the unbelievable pain and fear – but at some point in the ordeal his whole body started tingling. Immense pressure built up beneath his skin, as if someone had shoved an air pump into him and set it on high, then suddenly the fire didn't seem so bad. He could still feel it, could still feel the sting of the flames, but now the pain wasn't nearly as bad. Now he could stand up.

Eyes closed and head hunched, Holden pushed himself onto his feet; he didn't really fancy testing whether or not whatever was protecting him covered his orifices, too. A stab in his gut made him double over for a moment, and he realised that his organs must've been pretty badly damaged, seared and penetrated by the flames. Although the actual tissues had been healed, he probably had a whole lot of blood and other fluids pooled in various internal cavities. It wasn't a massive deal – his body would be siphoning it all off even as he stood – but it was going to take a good thirty seconds longer to complete than normal. The walk to the doorway was going to be uncomfortable.

He made it two steps before walking into something large and metal; _the cages_, he thought. _They must have fallen over in the blast. _Reaching out blindly, he felt around until he was able to get a grasp on the metal bars, then pulled hard. The first cage shifted, giving way and falling with a clang at his feet as he jumped backwards quickly. He ignored the throbbing in his stomach, focussing on getting himself out of the fire – he didn't know how he was protected from the flames or how long it would last, but he didn't want to push it. He forced a second cage, warped from the intense heat, out of his way, clearing enough space for him to slip through, and then he was feeling his way across the burning room as the aching inside him faded, still choking on the smoke and still squeezing his eyes tight shut. Things could've been better, but they definitely could've been worse; he wasn't dead, and as he walked through the crackling flames, that was good enough for him.

* * *

_Reaching the door, she slipped into the hallway and stood there, pressed against the wall and on the alert for anyone else coming towards the room._

Star felt like she was trapped in some kind of awful dream; the alarm blared around her like the amplified cries of an animal in pain, Holden was stuck in the fire, cut off from her by a pile of cages, her shoulder was still aching, Kokoe was flapping his or her webbed hands around in panic, and she could hear shouts and footsteps just around the corner. And on top of all that, she was _starving_. Not just my-stomach's-rumbling starving, either. More like I-haven't-eaten-in-hours-and-I've-been-using-up-way-too-much-energy-and-I-might-just-be-about-to-pass-out starving. The walls of the corridor swam a little in front of her as she tried to prepare for the oncoming fight, but she blinked hard and forced herself to breathe slowly. With any luck, adrenaline would tide her through this.

The first guards rounded the corner into the hall, their footsteps pounding on the floor. They were followed closely by a number of Erasers.

'Kokoe, stay close,' Star said, her eyes fixed on the threat coming towards them as she stood her ground.

'Kokoe can fight. Fight well.'

Star's glaze flickered down to the small thing by her feet, crouched on all fours. It didn't look like a creature that could hold up in a fight, but as she watched, Kokoe's eyes seemed to protrude slightly from her – despite the low voice, Star thought it was female – head, shifting to sit wider apart and higher up.

'Eyes show Kokoe more. Can see bad people when they are all around. Kokoe is ready to fight well.'

Turning back to the approaching men, Star shrugged.

'Okay, whatever. Just don't get yourself killed.'

Then the guards were upon them, and she was sending out a flurry of lightning-fast kicks that made contact before her opponents even knew what was happening. But she wasn't as fast as usual, fatigue and hunger slowing her down, and it was all she could do to defend herself against the crowd of men and Erasers. Her blows hurt them, sent them staggering back, perhaps winded them for a moment, but within seconds they'd be back again, jostling to take her down.

Beside her, Kokoe had literally leapt into action, bouncing around in the mosh pit of fur and uniform, spitting at anyone who turned their face in her direction; anything she hit seemed to sizzle, flesh and clothing alike.

'Kokoe, wha-?' Star shouted over as she kicked out at another guard, wincing as the movement jostled her shoulder.

'"Kokoe" short for "Kokoe poison dart frog",' she replied, her deep voice cutting under the shrill wail of the siren. 'Scientists use words a lot. But too long for Kokoe to use as name. So Kokoe made it shorter. Poison is good for guards. Makes pain.'

'Well, keep it up.' Star shifted along the wall, feeling the heat of the fire against her legs as it spread out from the room. She didn't want to move too far from the doorway, didn't want to feel like she was leaving a member of the group behind to be burned to death, but she just couldn't deal with fighting a bunch of steroid-pumped losers whilst flames were lapping around her feet. She could barely deal with it _without_ that; the corridor really was swimming now, and she knew she wouldn't be able to keep up the fight for much longer.

She became vaguely aware of someone standing next to her, nearly throwing out a punch in that direction with her good arm, but she was stopped short when she span to see Holden by her side, grinning as he took out a guard. All over his body, his flesh was raised up into bumps that made it look as though someone had stuck smooth, flat stones underneath his skin.

'You absolute ass!' Star shouted at him, throwing a man aside with a fresh wave of energy now that this new force had been added to the team. 'It's cool, you just laze around in the fire _completely protected _whilst I'm out here dealing with this lot.'

'It wasn't exactly a picnic for me in there, Star,' Holden retorted as he kicked an Eraser in the chest, forcing it back into another and causing both of them to fall to the floor in a furry heap. The one on top picked himself up off his unconscious teammate, giving his head a shake as he ran at Holden a second time, but before he could reach his target he was floored by a swift chop to the base of the skull delivered by Star.

Their opponents were dwindling now, the majority of them lying out cold on the floor. The fight went on, Kokoe hopping around and proving to be far more useful than Star had first imagined as she took out enemy after enemy with well-aimed shots of poison; when the last Eraser standing threw a punch at Holden, the force of the dodged blow sent the hulking beast spinning around by his own momentum, turning just enough for Kokoe to leap up and deliver a spray of acid directly into his face. He disappeared down the hall, howling as he went, and then the three of them were left standing amongst the bodies and the smoke, the orange light from the flames flickering behind them.

Star staggered, her legs giving out slightly beneath her, and Holden put out a hand to stop her from falling over.

'We've got to find you some food, huh?'

'What time is it?' Her voice was fainter than usual, just audible over the still-blaring alarm.

'Not a clue. Watch melted. But you won't be able to do anything unless you eat first.'

Kokoe jumped up, her bowed legs splaying out behind her.

'Kokoe knows food room. Where scientists go. Break time.'

Holden nodded.

'Right, then you can show us the way.'

'Hold it, Starfish,' Star said, her eyes on the floor, her breathing carefully controlled as she fought the fuzziness in her head. All the same, there was a smirk on her lips, and a definite snigger in her voice when she spoke again: 'You might not have been burnt to nothing in that fire, but your clothes weren't quite so lucky. Cover up, man.'

* * *

'_Dylan, Kate, Ratchet. At the risk of sounding like a clichéd movie villain, I've been waiting for you.'_

The General stood from her seat on the desk, her face calm, the gun still trained on the group standing in the doorway.

'I must admit, I hadn't foreseen your little pack breaking out of Hold 13. It was quite the remarkable achievement. Of course, the device implanted into Maximum's head let me know exactly what your plans were; the walls of the holding cell prevented all transmissions, but as soon as you went crawling through the ventilation shafts I was able to retrieve a signal again and overhear everything. It's a shame that you're not all fitted with similar pieces of technology – I really would have enjoyed watching the different threads of this story unfold – but no matter. Exterminatory teams are on their way to each of your intended locations, ready to cut off all attempts at achieving your goals. And if, by any chance, those teams should fail, there's a somewhat larger force positioned outside.

'For the moment, though, it seems as if your biggest problem is me. Because I do believe that the task of my capture has been assigned to you three, and you may be able to tell that I have no intention of letting that happen.'

'We should just go for her,' Ratchet said, not bothering to lower his tone; it didn't seem worth it. 'She can't shoot all of us at once.'

The General smiled coolly at him.

'I can't,' she conceded. 'But I can shoot one of you at once. Are any of you willing to take that risk?' They were silent, and she regarded them with a cold detachment, as if they were mildly interesting exhibits in a museum. 'No, you're not, are you?' she said quietly. 'And not because you're afraid for your own lives, either. No one is willing to risk the lives of their comrades, the other two mutant experiments who stand beside them, not even at the gain of bringing me down. Your loyalty is touching.' She fingered the trigger of the gun. 'And your stupidity is overwhelming.'

Kate made a small sound of fear, taking what seemed to be an entirely involuntary step sideways so that her left side was almost completely shielded by Dylan's right. She ducked her head a little, hiding her face in his shoulder. The General chuckled sadistically, watching the group as they stood, defenceless, across the room from her.

'Our stupidity?' Ratchet asked conversationally from Dylan's other side. 'Seems to me that sticking with each other has been the only thing that's kept most of us alive this long.'

'What you don't appear to understand is that to achieve anything you must be willing to _do_ anything. Your petty ties to other living beings are an indulgence, and they leave you vulnerable; I imagine that if any one of you had been prepared to sacrifice the other failures standing in the doorway in order to make a move towards me, I would be detained by now. After all, I'm not physically strong enough to take any of you on in combat, and I have no defence to hand other than the gun I'm holding. But I don't need one, do I? I've got all the power over you that I need, and you placed it right i-'

A sudden blur flashed through the air, spinning from Kate's hand. The gun went flying from The General's grip, a crack sounding as a bone broke from the force of the thing hitting her arm; Kate's own shoe, removed surreptitiously under the cover of Dylan's body with an accompanying whisper of "keep her talking" aimed at Ratchet's keen ears. In seconds The General was on the floor, Kate's knee digging into her back, her hands pinned by her sides.

'Sick!' exclaimed Ratchet. 'Y'know, anyone who can turn a sneaker into a serious weapon has my respect for, like, always. Kate the Great strikes again.'

The girl in question looked down at the back of The General's head, breathing down her neck as she spoke:

'I really thought you'd be smarter than to do the whole "bad guy spiel" thing. It's always where they fall down in movies."

'You think I'm the bad guy,' The General replied, her voice still horribly calm but now with a new hint of insanity beneath it. Her lower arm was bent at an unnatural angle, her face pale. 'Interesting. It's all a matter of perspective, Kate, my dear. The only thing that changes is what side of the line you stand on.' She laughed, and this time it sounded manic, deranged. 'There are others who believe in the same cause that I do. Thousands of others. I'm not afraid let them take my place when I am eliminated. Go ahead. Do what you came to do.'

'It would be my pleasure,' said Dylan, and as he delivered a quick kick to the side of The General's head, Kate felt the tension leave the woman's muscles. Standing up, she stood by the two guys and the three of them looked down at the limp body on the floor.

'Insane,' Ratchet said into the silence. 'Completely nuts.'

The other two nodded in agreement, and Kate bent down to lift The General onto her shoulders in a modified fireman's lift, making sure her hands and feet were pinned securely in case she regained consciousness. Then she kicked out at the door, the metal crumpling beneath the force of her blow, and the three teenagers made their way back out into the hall.

* * *

_'Right then,' I said, turning towards the hall. 'Let's get outta here.'_

We raced through the corridors, feet squeaking on the floor as we swung around corners and lashed out at anyone who got in our way. Ella kept up pace well enough, running with the rest of us around her, making sure she didn't get hurt.

_Okay, come on, we're nearly there, _I thought. _Let's just hope that the others have all managed not to get themselves into trouble._ I snorted quietly to myself as I sprinted past the opening to a stairwell. _As if._

'Max!' A voice sounded from behind me and I whirled quickly, fists at the ready to deal with whatever I was facing this time.

I swear by Iggy's frilly pink oven gloves, my heart stopped beating when I saw Fang emerge from the hallway we'd just passed. And no, I'm not even kidding; Iggy actually has a pair of frilly pink oven gloves. But seriously, that's so, so not the point.

He was alive. He was alive, he was alive, he was alive. There really wasn't much more than that strolling around in my head at that moment. I wanted to… God, I don't even know what I wanted to do. I wanted to scream or pass out or throw up. I wanted to slap him or hug him or just touch him, just to make sure that he was real, that he was here, in the hallway in front of me, holding some kind of tiny person in his arms. The astonished cries of Iggy and the Gasman rang out as I strode back along the corridor towards Fang, not knowing exactly what I intended to do once I reached him. _"There's always a plan", huh? Screw that._

As it happened, I didn't get the chance to reach him before he spoke again.

'Max.'

I was almost too overcome by just hearing him say my name to understand what he meant by it – don't judge me, it had been a long day and I honestly thought I'd never hear that sound again – but then he held out the thing he had in his arms, and his face was full of that deep sadness that I'd seen far too much recently. Realising that something more was going on than just Fang being alive and okay, I slowed as I got close, my gaze falling to the person he was holding.

My hands clapped themselves over my mouth, all the breath leaving my lungs in one great whoosh as I realised who it was.

_No, no, no, no, NO, but YES because she's alive but she died and she was dead and the building and the explosion, WE COULDN'T FIND HER BODY and that's why, because there wasn't a body because she's not dead, GOD, my baby, what did they do? why are you so thin? why aren't you speaking or looking at me or even opening your eyes and are you that far gone? what did they DO to you? oh, my baby, my baby girl, just look at you, you brave, brave child and yes, yes, yes, she's ALIVE and ANGELANGELANGEL if you can hear my thoughts right now then I love you more than you could ever imagine and I will never let them lay one finger on you again for as long as I live._

My hand ghosted over her bald head, unable to believe that I wouldn't crush her if I really allowed myself to touch her properly, that she wouldn't just crumble beneath my fingers and disappear again.

_My baby_.

Fang nudged me gently with his elbow, forcing me back into the noisy, bright hallway, forcing me to breathe again and look up into his face. For a second that felt like a split-second we just stood there, then I bit back the tears that were coming, sucked in the unbearable, sickening relief that was trying to topple me, and turned back towards the others.

**A/N I would've like to make the reunion with Fang a bit more emotional, but it seemed to me that discovering Angel was alive would take precedent. Dammit, Megan, this is the problem with having all these scenes in the middle of a dangerous, time-sensitive sequence! But there are chapters scheduled for more emotional stuff later, I promise. Right now they're just fighting for their lives. They don't have a lot of time to stop and chat about stuff. :P Review!**


	28. Chapter 27

**A/N Hey all! Just so you know, updates are gonna be slower for a while, 'cause I'm away on holiday and access to a computer for me to write on is sketchy. There aren't too many chapters left, but I'm not sure how many I'll be doing over the next two weeks. So that's slightly inconvenient. But the story will definitely be done by the end of the month - you might just have to deal with getting normal-speed updates rather than one-per-day crazy updates for a while. :P**_  
_

_'You might not have been burnt to nothing in that fire, but your clothes weren't quite so lucky. Cover up, man….'_

…_she kicked out at the door, the metal crumpling beneath the force of her blow, and the three teenagers made their way back out into the hall…_

…_then I bit back the tears that were coming, sucked in the unbearable, sickening relief that was trying to topple me, and turned back towards the others..._

They ran, all of them, towards the meeting point that had been set. In The General's now-deserted office, a map still lit up the wall beside the desk, showing an enlarged image of the School's blueprint as it looked in real time; clear on the map were nine yellow dots spread through the hallways, moving towards the same exit. They were the only ones The General had been interested in – those, and the one that represented Nudge, still visible in the control room a couple of floors up. The locations of Ella and Angel hadn't been important to her. Perhaps they should've been. But they weren't. She had set the image to show only the positions of the ten members of the group who had made their way from Oregon to the School.

So yes, nine of them were moving…

* * *

We reached the door about two minutes after we were supposed to. I didn't know where the other groups had gotten to, or what I was going to do if they didn't show up, but in the end it turned out that I didn't have time to stop and ponder those questions; light from outside met our eyes as we turned the corner into the final corridor, and beyond the half-open door there was movement and noise, the sound of the alarm being replaced by the sounds of people milling around and shouting orders. I sped up a little, positioning myself at the front of the group. Iggy took up the rear, with Fang in front of him carrying Angel, and Ella and Gazzy stuck close behind me.

It would be a massive understatement to say that the goings-on of the last few minutes had been a shock. Fang and I had walked back to the others, and when Gazzy had laid eyes on his sister it looked for a moment as though he was going to collapse right there in the middle of the hallway. In that moment all I'd wanted was to give him a moment to just take her in, cry, shout, whatever he needed to do… Unfortunately the time-sensitive situation hadn't really allowed a long, emotional reunion, and as much as I hated myself for having to do it, after a few seconds of stunned silence I'd clapped my hands together in that way I have that I'm sure pisses people off. Then we were moving again, each of us continuing our own personal freak-out in the privacy of our own heads as we ran. In a way it didn't feel real – I still couldn't get my head around the fact that Fang and Angel were both alive and right there in the hall with me – and I'm fairly certain there was a part of me that thought it was all a dream, that fully expected to wake up strapped to a surgeon's table somewhere, about to be retired. But until that happened, we were running for the door, and I was the leader, and I had to make sure that no one got hurt. Well, no one on _my_ team, of course. The bad guys could be tossed in a mammoth-sized blender and set to 'pulverize' for all I cared.

It wasn't until I'd reached the door and flung it fully open that I realised things weren't going to be so easy; spread across the grounds of the School, faces turned towards us as we burst from the building, was a sea of children.

My problem with the situation went something like this: I really don't like violence.

Okay, who am I kidding?

_But_ I only like violence if it's being directed at the right people.

In my book, a bunch of kids doesn't make that cut.

The thing was that, as decked out as the Generation 77ers were with crazy-deadly abilities and whatnot, they _were_ just children, and there was a big part of me that suspected they weren't the ones running things upstairs, if you get my drift. As we stood in the doorway staring at them, and they stood in the grounds staring back, it looked to me as though they had the same not-quite-there look about them as the Doomsday kids. Beating up evil kids was a grey area; beating up kids under the influence of some insane organisation's mind control was a no-no.

Which would've been great and all if the kids in question had been willing to step aside and just let us walk past. But then I wouldn't be having the moral dilemma in the first place, would I? Because what _they_ seemed to want to do was fight. And whilst I didn't really want to hurt any of them, I wasn't too crazy about just sitting back and letting myself or my family get beaten to a pulp, either.

See, these are the kinds of decisions I have to deal with. Next time you don't know which cereal to choose in the morning, feel lucky.

It looked like they'd been told/ordered/forcibly programmed not to make a move before we did, because everyone seemed frozen in a weird kind of stand-off; we watched them, they watched us, and no one moved.

'Fang, you've got Angel. Get away as quickly as you can,' I muttered under my breath, not even daring to turn away from the Gen 77ers to face my group. 'Iggy, Gazzy, get Ella out of here. I'll stick around for as long as it takes for the others to show up, they can't have been here already.'

'Max, you can't face all this on your own,' said Fang quietly from behind me.

'I wouldn't need to fight them all, just hold them off,' I whispered back. 'All defence, no outright attacking.'

'Yeah, attacking would be stupid. Trying to defend yourself against a bazillion super-soldier kids sounds _way_ easier,' Gazzy said sarcastically.

'Besides, they're probably under orders not to let any of us escape,' Iggy added. 'I don't think any of us are getting out of here all that easily.'

I scowled, clicking my jaw from side to side as I looked out at the mass of blank-faced, staring children. He was right, of course; if they were all standing here ready to take us on, it was unlikely that they wouldn't be expecting us to just, you know, _fly away_. They'd have measures in place to make sure that didn't happen.

Then the choice was taken out of my hands as Holden, Star and some kind of frog-like creature came barrelling through the door, knocking everyone forwards in a crazy domino effect that sent me stumbling into the front line of the zombie army.

And apparently that counts as a first move, because suddenly all hell broke loose.

* * *

_Nudge waved him out of the way of the keyboard, her mind buzzing as her gaze fixed on that one word: delete._

_'I think we're gonna be a bit late getting back to the others…'_

It took a good few minutes to go through the files for the whole group, making sure that all their expiration dates were deleted from the system. Nudge knew that they'd gone over their time limit, and she was definitely worried about how Max would react once they joined up with the others again, but hopefully they'd all understand once she told them what she'd done.

'What's going to happen to all this if The General gets turned back into Dr Martinez?' she asked Jeb, skidding her chair along a bit to where a screen still held her search for the tone. That was what made this room so _cool_; if she'd needed to then she could've worked on about twenty different things at once, all on different screens, without having to worry about getting tabs mixed up or anything, just zipping around on her swivel chair.

'I'm not sure. Technically she'd still own the property – not that legal rights mean much when it comes to this place – but I doubt she'll want too much to do with it all after everything that's happened.' Jeb looked over at Nudge from his seat at the other side of the unit. 'What do you think should happen to it?'

Nudge frowned as one hundred different ideas came into her head at once, but she bit her tongue and looked down at her fingers moving across the keyboard, thinking about what she really wanted before replying.

'It would be good to know that the School had been destroyed. Like, that'd make it feel really safe and stuff, y'know? Even though saving Dr Martinez is going to stop everything from working, it would be all like the building was still there so the place where it all happened still existed, and that's kinda scary. But I don't know if it _can_ be destroyed, because there are so many things in here that could help people if they were used by nice scientists like most of the ones on the Wendy K or something instead of crazy evil scientists who wanted to experiment on little kids. So maybe it shouldn't be knocked down, an-' She stopped herself, realising that her words had been coming faster and faster as she spoke. 'It couldn't be destroyed, could it? Not really.'

Sighing, Jeb watched the monitor as Nudge worked.

'Probably not, I'm afraid. You're right; there's a lot of work and equipment and research material held in this place that could be incredibly beneficial. It could help advance pharmacology, medicine, technology, anthropology, biology… There have been some great minds involved in this organisation, not all of them fully aware of what they were helping to achieve. It would be difficult to throw it all away. But I understand what you mean about the building being something you'd be happy to see go.' He grimaced, and Nudge realised that the School held some horrible memories for him, too.

'We could collect all the data and stuff, transfer it from this base to another one somewhere, then Iggy and Gazzy could blow the building up,' she said, smiling at the image in her head. 'Then we could make sure that only good people used the information for good things.' She nodded resolutely, pleased with her idea.

Jeb's smile was a little sad as he stood up from his seat and walked towards her, putting his hand on the back of her chair and looking up at the screen.

'Information is difficult to control, Nudge. You should know that better than anyone. But yes. That would be nice.'

The conversation seemed kind of over, so Nudge chewed at the inside of her cheek and enjoyed the sound of the keys under her fingers. It was a difficult hack; the data she needed was buried way deep in the system, and since practically no one knew it even existed, it hadn't been accessed in ages. The trail left by the last person to retrieve the information was long gone, trampled into nothing by the thousands of keystrokes and thoughts and personalities that had used the control room since. But Nudge still knew computers, and she still knew what she was doing – it was just taking a bit longer than it would have if she'd been left with a nice shiny track leading the way.

It took a few minutes for her to realise how hot it had become. She twisted to look up at Jeb, who was wiping at his forehead, his nose crinkled up in confusion.

'Are we next door to a boiler room or something?' Nudge asked, hands still tapping away.

'Not that I'm aware of,' Jeb replied, looking up towards the ceiling for any signs of an industrial heating system. His gaze fell on the set of screens that still displayed the camera feeds streamed from throughout the building, half-forgotten as attention had been turned back to saving Dr Martinez, and his eyes widened as realisation dawned on him: 'The fire. It's started to spread out. Star and Holden were on the floor just below us, weren't they? We must be close to being right above the source of the explosion, _that's_ why we felt it so much. The heat's rising up through the floor.'

Nudge stared, her eyes fixed on a different screen.

'Jeb!' She pointed. 'There they are, Max and the others, outside, fighting the Gen 77 kids. They're completely outnumbered, there's no way… I should be there with them, or I should be helping from here...' Covering her face with her hands, she shook her head hard, her breathing starting to come in quick gasps. 'I can't do this anymore! Acting like a god and controlling everything was fun before, but I can't keep saving everyone because I don't know how, and my head's getting all screwed up and there's too much to get fixed and it's too hot in here!'

She felt a hand on her back, and Jeb's voice came from her left.

'You don't have to save everyone. It's okay, Nudge. You do what you were doing, just keep looking for that file. That's how you're helping. I'll deal with the rest.'

'How?' she cried, taking her hands away from her face and looking up at him.

'The Generation 77 project was the first to work directly with the Doomsday Group – all those kids will have been pitched at the same frequency, as it were, and it won't be nearly as well-guarded as Valencia's. I can find that, you keep going with your job.' His voice was calm, and it made Nudge slightly calmer to hear it. She nodded, brow still crinkled a little in worry.

'Okay.'

Jeb moved away from her towards the other end of the unit, but before he could reach it, there was an awful kind of creaking-crunching sound, and the floor beneath his feet gave way.

**A/N So yes, I shall update whenever I can get my hands on my mum's laptop whilst I'm away, but that could mean updates rangin from within a couple of days to none for about a week or so (she can be really protective of her laptop - it's got all her work stuff on it). Try not to hate me for being slow! **

**Let me know what you thought of this chapter, and maybe I'll be able to use emotional blackmail to get her to let me use it ('Mum, look at all the reviews. Think how many people I'll be letting down if I don't update quickly!'). It's worth a shot. So review!**


	29. Chapter 28

**A/N Olá a todos! I'm back from Portugal and I'm very sorry that I was silent whilst I was away - Mum was fine with me using her laptop, but then we didn't have any internet connection for me to post through. Anyways, now you're getting two chapters to make up for it, so be happy. :P**

Suddenly the docile, waiting crowd of Gen 77 zombie kids descended into brawling chaos; their front lines surged forwards, pushing over me like some kind of solid wave towards the others at the door. Noise erupted out of the silence that had been there only seconds before, battle cries filling the air as both wordless yells and shouted threats. I didn't have time to look back at the others before I was whaled into, a number of kids falling on me at once. _Right Max,_ I thought, _how can you fight something off without hurting it?_ I might as well not have worried, though, because it turned out that these things were dang near impossible to land a hit on anyway. Most of them were just so quick that they dodged anything I threw at them, but others had more unusual methods of evasion: some were clearly mind-readers, moving before I'd even gone to attack, anticipating my actions perfectly; some seemed to be made of rubber, contorting and stretching their bodies into impossible shapes to escape my fists and feet; one in particular looked as if he could actually pull his own matter apart, disintegrating before my blows could land and then re-forming right in front of my eyes as I spun through the battle.

For a while it was like they toyed with me, dancing around me as I struck out again and again, putting all my energy into moving faster, striking harder, trying to make contact. _They're waiting until you've tired yourself out, _I told myself._ Slow down. Stop playing offence. All you have to do is get out and make sure the others do the same._ By this point I'd reached the chain-link fence surrounding the complex, jostled through the crowd by their heckling jabs. I whipped around, my back against the fence so that nothing could catch me from behind, and shifted lower, pushing my centre of gravity down towards the dirt, grounding myself, making it clear that I wasn't going to waste any more energy attacking things that I couldn't make contact with. Defence mode, activated. There was a moment of surprise among my charming little group of assailants at my sudden change in style, and I had enough time to take in what was happening across the rest of the battleground: Fang twisting through the air, holding Angel close against his chest as he evaded some airborne Generation 77ers; Iggy and Gazzy up on the roof, trying to stand up against their attackers whilst making sure that Ella wasn't hurt; Star zipping through the throng, her face white; Holden pushing past anyone in front of him, not caring about the hits that were landed on his body as he made his way over to the place where Ratchet and Dylan were placed on either side of Kate, supporting her as she fought even with The General slung across her shoulders.

It's amazing how long a second can last sometimes, how much you can absorb from a scene.

My first thought was 'how are we supposed to manage this with the added weight of three people we need to protect?' Angel, Ella, and The General/my mom were hindrances, preventing the group from giving the fight their all as they dealt with having to look after someone else in the fray.

My second thought was 'where's Nudge?' I barely had time to think about what I would do to Jeb if he'd let her get hurt or, worse, turned on us _again_, because suddenly my time was up – my happy band of genetically-enhanced rivals was over the momentary confusion. They crowded in on me, throwing out blow after blow, and suddenly it was all I could do to defend myself against the onslaught.

* * *

A flash of adrenaline speared through Nudge's blood.

'Jeb!' she cried, not pausing to think about how much things had changed, how only a week, a day, an hour ago she might well have let him fall. The floor had collapsed, caving in on the room below, Jeb's weight acting as the last straw for the already heat-weakened structure; now he clung to a slab of flooring that hadn't fully detached, hanging down into the lower level of the building. Smoke billowed up through the gaping hole that had been left between the floors, creating a thick, black blanket around Nudge that swept into her mouth, burning her throat and invading her lungs. Moving down low, dropping beneath the level of the smoke as it rose to the ceiling, she sucked in a deep breath of half-clean air; the room was fuzzy, visibility awful, but through the shadows of the haze Nudge could see Jeb literally holding on for dear life. The space beneath him looked like hell, Nudge thought, all leaping flames and orange light that seared your eyes and made you blind even as the smoke did the same. It was a crazy, impossible combination of choking darkness and blistering light, the most horrible yin and yang Nudge had ever seen. Why did Iggy and Gazzy like fire so much?

'Jeb!' she called again, coughing.

His voice came back to her over the crackling, the popping of the flames, the creaking of the floor as it threatened to collapse even more, the ever-present alarm that Nudge thought would probably ring in her ears forever even if she managed to get out of here alive.

'Stay back! Don't come this way. Move slowly around the edges of the room and get out.'

She wanted to cry. She wanted to curl up in a ball right there on the floor and just sob, no matter if the tears evaporated as soon as they came. She couldn't leave him here, and besides, they still hadn't found the files they needed, and if she left now then what would be the point of them coming here at all? What would Jeb have died for?

She flattened herself out on the floor, trying to spread her weight as much as possible. How could she reach him without making everything give way again? Scanning the area through the smoke, breathing as shallowly as she could through her nose, Nudge caught sight of a pole lying on the opposite side of the room; a long hook used to open the windows that were placed high up on the wall. She almost screamed in frustration – how was she meant to reach it? It was placed right on the other side of the hole, and trying to get to it would probably just make things worse. A thought came to her and she stilled, staring at the pole. Those things were usually wooden, but the hook on the end would be metal, right? Her eyes dropped to her hands, her hands which could attract metal. Could she do it? She'd never tried pulling anything towards her over such a big distance, and she could feel her energy being sapped by the heat and the lack of air in the room. Focussing hard, Nudge stretched a hand out in front of her, her fingers splayed, palm facing the pole. _Please let this work_, she prayed, then her teeth gritted and her raised arm began to shake as she put everything she had into her magnetic power, imagining it leaving her hand as a sharp spear of energy directed straight towards the metallic hook on the opposite side of the room. It was as if time slowed down; seconds seemed to last for much longer, the flames that were still visible through the smoke suddenly didn't look as if they were flickering quite as fast, and as each moment went by Nudge became more and more desperate, more and more certain that she wasn't going to manage it. Then time went back to normal as the pole shot without warning across the room, nearly flying straight past her hand as she almost missed catching it in her surprise.

Feeling like she could've jumped in triumph – she didn't of course, that would just be stupid – she slowly picked herself up, feeling like she was being suffocated as the layer of smoke that hung a few feet off the floor enveloped her. She held out the pole, extending her arm as far out as she could, and shuffled tentatively towards Jeb.

'Jeb, grab hold!' Her voice came out about half as loud as she'd expected, rasping with the irritation of the hot smoke. _He's going to have to push off from the slab he's on to get up, _she thought. _It won't hold under that pressure. If we don't get this right first time then he's going to fall._ Jeb seemed to be thinking the same way.

'One shot, sweetie,' he called as his hand closed around the other end of the pole. Nudge stayed close to the wall, bracing herself against the more solid floor, using a large filing cabinet as a support.

'One, two, _three_!'

There was an almighty crash as the slab of floor broke away and fell down into the room below; Nudge felt the sound shudder through her body as she threw her weight backwards on the pole. For a moment Jeb looked suspended, hanging in the air like a stick puppet, then he was crashing to the floor, rolling quickly away from the edge of the hole as the structure gave out another groan. Suddenly Nudge felt his arms around her, bundling her up into him, and he was lifting her up just like he used to when she was younger, when he was living with them in Colorado.

'It's too dangerous here, we need to leave,' he said, and his voice was barely there, hoarse and croaking.

'No!' Nudge cried out, twisting out of his grip and moving as quickly as she dared over to the monitor. 'We need to do this, we _need_ to find the files and deactivate the Generation 77 people and save Dr Martinez! We _have_ to!'

Something in her voice must've told Jeb that it would be pointless to argue, or maybe he just knew that he wouldn't be able to walk away from everything without finishing the job, but either way he didn't protest to Nudge laying her hands back on the keyboard. As she worked, he moved steadily around the safer parts of the room, opening the lower windows by hand and using the hook to pull open as many of the higher ones as he could.

Then he was sitting in front of another monitor, working quickly to find the tone that would stop the Gen 77ers and save the rest of the group. _If it's not too late_, thought Nudge. Then she shook her head sharply, trying to clear it as her oxygen-deprived brain attempted to focus on the job at hand.

'Got it,' grated Jeb, and even though Nudge couldn't hear the tone that was being projected across the grounds, her eyes flicked quickly to the camera feed and she could see the effect it had on the children – suddenly the fighting ceased, the brawl died down. She longed to stare at the image for more time, to pick out every member of her family and make sure that they were okay, but she still had to finish what she was doing. It was as if there was a series of bolts inside her, sliding slowly away as each step was completed: one had gone when Jeb had opened the windows, letting a tiny amount of fresh air into the room and diluting the smoke just a bit; another had gone when she knew the first tone had been found. Now there were three left: find the second tone, get out, see the group safe and unhurt.

The next few minutes felt like an eternity of drumming at the keyboard and taking quick runs over to the nearest window for a gasp of clear air, but finally, _finally_, she found it. As she pressed the final key to activate the signal that would save Dr Martinez, the one that would end everything that had been going on since before she was born, Nudge felt as though she could have collapsed. She felt Jeb's hands on her shoulders, felt him reach past her to tap in the combination that would reverse the lockdown that she'd set on the room, and then he was pulling her to her feet, turning her around towards the exit.

A hulking, dark shape stood in the doorway.

'Surprise,' leered Not-Ari, and then he'd batted Jeb aside like a fly, swinging straight at Nudge. She barely had the strength to stand by herself, but somehow she managed to stumble out of the way of his fist. A second strike seemed to come out of nowhere, and even though she lifted her arms to try and block it, she was still forced sideways by the momentum of the blow. Then a tremendous kick sent her flying backwards, landing against the super-computer's main control board. She felt her back bend over it, thought she heard something crack, and then her body went limp, her eyes half closing; she thought maybe she'd passed out, but that didn't make sense. She could still see, could still smell the smoke, could still hear Not-Ari's words:

'Oh no, I think I broke her back,' he sneered, not even seeming affected by the smoke and the heat. 'Isn't that how my original template died the first time, _Daddy_?'

He turned to look over at Jeb, a horrible grin on his morphed face, but he was met by a powerful blow from the heavy wooden and metal pole as Jeb swung straight at his head. Caught off guard, Not-Ari lost his balance, spinning with the force of the hit and staggering. His foot caught the edge of the hole in the floor, and his arms wheeled wildly for a second before he tipped, dropping like a stone through the gap and into the fiery pit below. He didn't have time to open his wings.

'You're not my son,' Jeb choked out, dropping the pole and running over to Nudge. 'Nudge, can you hear me?' She wanted to nod, to let him know, but her head felt so heavy. 'Okay, sweetie, it's okay. I'm taking you out of here. It's okay, we're getting out.'

Lifting her once again, he carried her to the door, moving out into the hallway. The smoke had spread out, winding its way through the corridors, and somehow in the back of Nudge's addled mind she knew that Jeb wasn't going to be able to make it, not whilst he was carrying her. Their breathing grew weaker and shallower as the smoke took its toll, and they had only just rounded the second corner when Jeb's legs buckled.

**A/N Aren't you glad that I'm not leaving it there? Ha, onwards to the next chapter! And remember to review. :D**


	30. Chapter 29

**A/N My knees hurt. When I was in Portugal I decided to take up running - not too much, just a few km per day - and it turns out that I have flat feet and my trainers weren't right for me, so now my kneecaps aren't sitting properly within the joint. It hurts. -.- And now they're all strapped up so I can't walk or bend or do any of that fun stuff particularly well. Stupid trainers. Ah well, chapter time.**

The confusion in the grounds was massive. One second it had been like Armageddon, with the shouting and the fighting and the utter hopelessness and all that cheery stuff. I'd been faltering, taking on more and more hits, and I remember thinking 'this is it. We can't keep this up. This is the end.' Then suddenly it was like all the Gen 77ers had had their strings cut; every single one of them just stopped fighting and looked around in bewilderment. The looks on their faces would've been pretty damn funny if I hadn't been so confused myself.

Slowly I became aware of a sound ringing out above the murmuring that was spreading through the grounds – so I _had_ been right about the kids being brainwashed. My gaze snapped over to the place where Kate stood, staring around, her eyes wide. The body across her shoulders wasn't limp anymore; now it was struggling to be let down. Still The General, then. Not my mom yet. I moved forwards, shoving my way through the crowd – perplexed, only-just-unbrainwashed kids are so _bad_ at getting out of the way – and by the time I'd reached Kate a second tone had started up. The figure she was holding stopped struggling and lifted its head, and then my mom was looking at me with horror in her eyes.

'Max,' she whispered, her voice thin and broken. Kate lowered her gently to the ground, and I gripped her shoulders as she stood shakily, looking around the bizarre yard at the children who were frowning, crying, talking to those next to them in hopes of understanding what was going on. I watched her cautiously, not wanting to let myself believe the tone had worked until I was absolutely sure of it. Her gaze met mine again and the remorse in her eyes made me want to cry.

'I'm so sorry,' she managed, before her face crumpled and tears started running down her cheeks. I hugged her then, my own eyes dry, and for that moment it was as if our roles had been reversed; I was the parent, and she was the child. I could see the other members of the group gathering around us, and then Ella barrelled through the circle, her face red and twisted with a mixture of shock and relief. I let my mom – it really _was_ my mom – go and moved to the side so that Ella could reach her, watching as they clung to one another. Mom was whispering 'I'm sorry, I'm so sorry' over and over again in my sister's ear, not seeming to care that her arm was bent at a weird angle, hanging at her side, clearly broken. I didn't understand how she seemed to know what had happened, what she'd done; by the looks of things, none of the Generation 77 kids had a clue. I guessed it was something that I'd have to ask later, once we were all out of this awful, soul-sucking place and holed up somewhere safe.

I scanned the rest of the group, cataloguing how injured each of them seemed to be: Holden, of course, was unhurt, but looking at him now I realised that he was wearing a lab coat and an ill-fitting pair of pants instead of the clothes he'd had on earlier; Star's arm hung at her side, and I guessed that the pressure of the fight must have caused the dislocation to recur; Ratchet, Dylan and Kate didn't appear to have any major injuries, and Fang still held an unhurt Angel against him; Iggy cupped his hand tightly over his seemingly-broken jaw, his other arm supporting Gazzy, who was doubled over and holding his stomach. I strode towards him, wincing at my own injuries, and helped him get down onto the ground. Pulling his shirt up, I could see some heavy bruising spreading across the lower half of his torso. Not good. And Nudge still hadn't turned up.

Fighting back panic, I turned to Mom from my place on the ground.

'You remember everything, don't you?' She nodded, her face pulled tight in grief. 'Alright then, I know that this is moving really quickly and everything, but I need you to use the School's contacts, any of them, to get a chopper or a plane or _something_ here as soon as possible, okay? We need to get transport to a hospital fast.' I twisted to face the others. 'Those of you who aren't hurt too badly, look after the others. Kate, can you come with me to find Nudge and Jeb?'

'Of course.' Kate nodded, looking shaken but determined.

'Okay.'

Seeming to swallow her emotions, my mom snapped into fully-blown leader mode, ordering one of the evacuated whitecoats to show us the way to the control room. If the whitecoat was surprised by her boss' sudden change in objective then she didn't show it. As she led us back into the building, I heard Mom calling for someone to get her a phone, and despite how worried I was about Nudge, Angel, Gazzy, _everyone_, I couldn't help smiling a bit; guess I know where I get my leadership skills from.

We wound through the hallways, and finally we reached the top floor. The acrid smell of smoke was obvious even before we left the stairwell, and fear clenched in my chest as we pushed through the doors to see a grey haze hanging in the corridors before us. As we carried on towards the control room it became clear that we were moving towards the source of the smoke, and with every step my sense of panic grew. What had happened here?

'The control room's just around the next few corners,' said the whitecoat, choking a little as she took a breath. We turned into the next corridor, and Kate almost tripped over something on the floor. Through the smoke, thicker here than before, we could make out the unconscious (_please just let them be unconscious_) forms of Nudge and Jeb.

'Oh no,' whispered the whitecoat, but neither Kate nor I bothered to speak; pulling Nudge up into my arms, I watched Kate do the same with Jeb, then we turned and made our way as quickly as we could back the way we'd come. All I could think about was how long they might have been lying there, choking on the smoke – a long time ago, after one of Iggy and the Gasman's more elaborate pyrotechnic stunts, I'd taken the liberty of reading up about fire safety, and as we headed back down the stairwell I remember something about how the smoke will usually kill you before the fire does. _Don't think about that_. _One step at a time, Max._

We burst out into the yard to the sight of a black chopper sitting in the middle of the space, its rotors still spinning slowly around. Before I could react, six doctory-looking folks had run up wheeling two stretchers with them. I had to fight all my instincts to punch their lights out as they took Nudge from my arms and laid her out on one of the gurneys, wasting no time with pleasantries as they raced her away from me towards the chopper.

As the helicopter lifted off the ground, I felt like throwing up with the strain of having to trust other people with my weakened-slash-injured family; they had taken Angel, Gazzy, and Star as well as Nudge and Jeb, and left three members of their emergency response team with us to deal with the more minor injuries that had been sustained until more transport could reach us. I was told that the first chopper had been one of a large group of emergency FBI vehicles located across the US, a set-up that was generally used to make sure that any agent can be guaranteed a pick-up within about half an hour even when they're working in the most remote areas in the country. The one that came to us made it in about fifteen minutes. Score one for the FBI.

The horrible part of the whole arrangement was that the rest of us had to hang around, keeping an eye on the still-confused Generation 77 kids and the possibly still-evil whitecoats and the definitely still-burning School. I wondered how long it would take for the fire to reach the no doubt large quantities of flammable and explosive substances that the labs held, and hoped that the fleet of 'copters would arrive before that happened; I seriously didn't think I could deal with any more chaos in one day. I looked around the grounds, seeing Mom getting her broken arm plastered up as Ella stood by her shoulder, and Iggy having a bandage wound under his chin and right up over his head to hold his jaw in place until proper X-rays could be taken, and the others spread out across the dusty ground, occasionally saying a few words to a passing Gen 77er. The evacuated whitecoats stood as far apart from everyone else as possible, talking amongst themselves.

Everything seemed a bit cloudy in my mind, and suddenly I realised that I was swaying where I stood, finding it hard to focus on anything; the immense pressure of the day seemed to be getting to me. I screwed my eyes up tight and opened them again to stare at the ground, trying to pull myself together, then before I knew it someone had walked up to me and wrapped me up in a pair of strong arms. Fang. My own arms wound around his back and I dropped my head onto his shoulder, feeling completely exhausted. We stood for a moment and then his voice drifted down to me like it was coming from miles away:

'So, saving the world… Turns out it's not so hard after all.'

I let out a weak laugh and nodded slightly against him.

'Yeah. Piece of cake,' I said shakily. I noticed a wetness on my hands and pulled back, feeling a stab of panic that was a bit like being suddenly doused in freezing water when I saw that they were red with blood. 'Fang!'

'It's fine,' he said, his voice calm as he placed his own hands over mine so that I couldn't stare at the blood on them anymore. 'Just some stitches that got pulled. It looks worse than it is.'

My head bobbed slowly in a kind of half-nod, and my eyes wandered away from him and back across the grounds, not really focussing on anything properly, not really taking anything in.

'Max?' Fang's voice drew my gaze back to him, but I couldn't keep my sight fixed on his face as my eyes kept on drifting around of their own accord. 'Are you alright?' His hands held my arms, steadying me.

I swallowed hard and took a deep breath, trying to wake myself up a bit.

'Uh-huh,' I said in what I'm sure was an entirely unconvincing way. 'I'm fine.'

**A/N So please let me know what you think, and sorry again for leaving it so long! Review!**


	31. Chapter 30

**A/N Come on folks, three reviews for two chapters isn't all that stellar. You can do better than that! :P This chapter was originally about twice as long, but I split it in half and I'll post the other part later on today if you're lucky!**

Everything got a bit fuzzy for a while after that. I don't know if I passed out or my brain just decided to stop working properly for a bit, but the next thing I remember clearly is coming to in a hospital bed hooked up to an IV. As I blinked my eyes open I caught sight of Iggy sitting up in a bed opposite me, still bound up in that crazy bandage.

'Max? You 'rake?' he asked quietly, speaking carefully through his teeth to keep his broken jaw from moving too much.

'How do you do that? Did I even make a sound just then?' I replied, stretching along the length of my body and feeling the kinks in my muscles from the last few days of flying and fighting.

He couldn't grin, but his eyes crinkled a bit at the sides.

'Your 'vreathing chainsht.' His words came out strangely slurred at the consonants, making him sound like a suit who'd had one too many at the staff Christmas party. 'How you fee'ing?'

'Kinda shaky. Bit stiff. What happened?'

'They said it wasz chust a mix 'f stress, t'rdniss, 'nd dehydr'tion.'

'No, what happened to the others?' My tone was growing more urgent. _Where is everybody?_

Iggy started to speak, but was cut off by Ratchet's voice preceding him as he walked through the doorway.

'Dude, stop talking. It makes me feel sore just listening to you. And I wouldn't wanna stick around if you woke that one up.' He jerked his head towards another bed on the far side of the room, where Star's blond head was just visible practically burrowed underneath the blanket.

'Is she okay?' I asked.

'Yeah. Apparently some tendons or something got torn when her shoulder dislocated again, so they patched that up in surgery, and as luck would have it she hasn't come around properly yet. Thank God.'

I nodded and swallowed hard.

'And the others?'

Ratchet crossed his arms, tilting his head back to look at the ceiling as he went through a mental list.

'Black Hat and the Gaster are both in surgery at the moment.' He rubbed a palm across his face. 'Haven't had any news yet but from what I can hear through all the noise in this place nothing's gone bad so far. Fang-Man got his stitches re-done and he's in the next room with Angel. Um…' He screwed up his nose as he tried to remember what he'd been told. 'They said they're gonna have to check up on her properly later on, but right now they're just wanting her to rest and she's hooked up to, like, a million IVs with liquid nutrients or something like that. That doctor dude was in a room with your mom and sister, but he took off somewhere about half an hour ago, and the other three are just down the corridor. Everybody crashed pretty hard after we got here, but I think a couple of them were waking up as I left, so they might be turning up soon.'

I sat still for a moment as I took it all in. Was it actually possible that we'd all come out of this alive? _Don't get ahead of yourself, Max. You're not out the other side just yet._

'Gazzy and Nudge – what's wrong with them?' I felt my throat constrict at the thought of two of my kids in theatres somewhere in the building, having God knows what done to them by people I'd never met before.

Ratchet shook his head, looking uncomfortable.

'Sounded like the little guy got a good few hits to the gut – his intestine got ruptured during the fight, so now I think they're just sewing that up and clearing away any other damage. Nudge…' He stopped and grimaced.

My heart started pounding about ten times faster.

'What is it, what happened to her?'

'She broke her back.' The words were blunt, blurted out as quickly as possible. I stared at him, unable to comprehend what he'd just said.

'_What_? Oh my God.' I breathed, turning to look at Iggy; the look in his eyes told me that he'd already known. Spinning back around, I threw the sheets off me, swinging my legs over the side of the bed. 'I-… Well, I've got to go an-'

'And what, Max?' My mom's voice was gentle as she came into the room. Her arm was plastered up to the elbow in a cast, and she was still wearing her General clothes, but the woman walking towards me was my mother – there was no doubt in my mind. I choked up immediately, feeling myself slipping at the sight of her.

'Mom?' That was all I managed to get out before I was crying, outright _sobbing_ as I sat in my hospital bed, unable to see my family safe and together and not knowing who to worry about the most. I felt the mattress dip as she sat down, and then she was enveloping me in her arms, pulling me into her as my shoulders shook and my breath came in desperate gasps; I was the child again.

'Sh, sh, shh, it's okay,' she whispered, stroking my hair as she rocked us slightly and echoed the words I'd said to Gazzy when we were sitting in the holding cell back at the School: 'It's all going to be okay.'

She pulled away slightly, taking in my face, and staring back at her I noticed how deeply sad she looked; I couldn't even begin to imagine the things going through her head about everything that had happened.

'I remember it all,' she said, as if reading my mind. 'Which is awful, because I can remember everything that I did and all the people I hurt. I can't believe…' She paused for a second, sniffing hard and screwing her eyes up shut for a moment before looking at me again and running a hand down the side of my face. 'But I can also remember you – I know how strong you've been, how much you've been through and how much you've achieved. I think this would all be so much harder to deal with if I'd come out of it not knowing who you were. My brave girl.'

I must have looked like an absolute mess. I'm pretty certain that in those last two weeks or so I'd experienced more emotional mayhem than any part-human ever should. When I finally managed to kinda-sorta pull myself together again, I looked around to see Ella standing by Iggy's bed, her fingers linked loosely with his as she watched me and our mother hug it out.

'Hey,' I said, holding a hand out, my voice still thick and raw from crying. 'Get over here.'

Mom moved away from me to let Ella past and I held my sister tight.

'Told you it wasn't Mom,' I muttered in her ear, and the comment seemed so juvenile, so incredibly colloquial after everything that had gone down, that both of us started laughing, the sound coming out all sniffly and weird through our tears.

Pulling out of our hug, I sat up straight to look around the room. Seeing my mom safe and unbrainwashed had made me feel a little calmer, a little less like I had to worry about a thousand things at once.

'Okay,' I said. 'I want to see the rest of my family.'

* * *

The next week passed in a strange blur – time in the hospital felt kind of suspended, like we were on some crazy vacation from the world.

We left the room I woke up in and wandered along the hall, the squeak of the wheels on my IV stand accompanying us as we went. Being in a hospital still made me feel jumpy, the smell making me want to smash a window and fly away, but I was too focussed on checking in on everybody that I didn't have space in my head to think about it too much.

Our first stop was the room next door: Fang and Angel's. We found the two of them curled up on the same bed, Fang's arms holding Angel loosely as they slept. I stepped towards them, reaching out to barely brush against my little girl's hand, then twisted around to face my mom.

'What happened to her?'

The look on Mom's face said that it wasn't the time to talk about it, that for now, no matter how hard it felt, everyone had to take some time off from the questions and the serious discussions.

We moved across the hallway to the room where Dylan, Kate, and Holden were sitting, blurry-eyed from having just recently woken up. Star zipped in soon after that, followed by the same frog-like thing I'd caught a brief glimpse of before the battle in the School's grounds had started; once Star was done berating us for abandoning her in the hospital room, she introduced her new friend as Kokoe. We all sat around in that room for quite a while, stilted conversation occasionally making its way through the tense space as we waited to hear about Nudge and Gazzy. After what felt like ages, a doctor knocked on the door to tell us that Gazzy had come out of surgery; he'd suffered some "serious blunt trauma" around his abdomen, which had resulted in multiple tears forming along the length of his intestines, but the holes had been stitched up and the internal bleeding had been controlled. He was currently in the recovery ward and he'd be brought down to us as soon as he woke up.

Just knowing that another member of my family was safe, that he was alive and sleeping in a room somewhere above us, made me feel kind of faint with relief. I ran my palms over my face, kneading at my eyes with the heels of my hands, then looked around the room to see everyone reacting in their own ways to the news; I think we were all too drained to whoop or jump up and down, but there were a lot of tired smiles, nods, and deep breaths going round. As my gaze landed on Iggy, I noticed that his eyes were still narrowed in worry.

'Hey Ig,' I said softly, moving over to sit next to him.

'Hey,' he replied, not looking up at me. I studied his expression as best I could with the bandage in the way. 'He's okay, you know. We're just waiting for him to wake up now.'

'I noo,' he mumbled, and then he turned, shifting around to face me properly. 'But I should'f bin otching him better. In the figh'.'

'"Watching him"?' I repeated, frowning. 'Iggy, this isn't your fault. It was crazy out there, and you were already making sure Ella didn't get hurt… It's not your fault.'

He nodded, but I could tell that he was still beating himself up for not looking after Gazzy better.

When the Gasman was wheeled in fifteen minutes later, he did not look at all like someone who'd just undergone a few hours of life-saving surgery; perhaps he was still giddy from the anaesthetic, but he grinned so hard when he saw us that I found myself mimicking his expression as we all moved forwards to greet him.

'Where's Angel?' he asked once the fussing around him had died down a bit.

'Just across the hall, sweetie,' I replied. 'Fang's got her and she's okay, just sleeping things off right now.'

His big blue eyes stared at me where I sat on the bed next to him.

'"We're going to be okay." That's what you said before, wasn't it?'

'Yeah,' I said, stroking his forehead, ruffling his fringe a little. 'That's what I said. And hey, we're all here, aren't we?'

'Angel isn't,' he pointed out. 'Fang isn't, Nudge isn't.'

'They will be soon. I promise.'

It was one of those happy occasions when I made a promise that actually held true: just a few minutes after that, Fang came through the door carrying Angel with him. Without a word, Gazzy, shifted over in his bed to make a space, and when his sister was laid down beside him he pulled the sheets over so that they covered her as well. They lay there together, and it wasn't until a couple of minutes had passed that I noticed tears leaking silently out of the corners of the Gasman's closed eyes. My throat choked up so much that I couldn't speak for a while.

**A/N It sounds a bit naive, but I wasn't expecting to have so much to say in the final chapters after the battle. [Review.] It shouldn't really have come as a surprise - I guess there's still a lot to tie up. [Review.] Plus, the fact that I can't really walk anywhere right now means I have a lot of time to sit and write. [Review] :D Review! Wait, did I say that already...?**


	32. Chapter 31

**A/N As promised, part II of the group's adventures in hospital!**

Even with the relief of seeing Gazzy patched up, and the rightness of seeing him and Angel being reunited, the silence that hung in the room was still thick with worry over Nudge. Of all the injuries that had been sustained, hers was the worst. I mean, a broken _back_? Oh, _God_… The thought of it made me feel sick.

We didn't hear anything for hours – the only people who came in to see us were folks coming to check up on how Gazzy was recovering, or to make sure that Star's shoulder was still strapped up properly, or to bring us food. Not that I was complaining, especially about that last one, but I was beginning to feel like I was ready to climb the walls. The sky outside was starting to turn dark by the time a figure finally appeared in the glass window that was set into the door.

Jeb came into the room, and it surprised me how thankful I was that he was okay; until that moment I hadn't thought I really cared all that much. He looked kind of grey, like he'd aged about twenty years since the last time I'd seen him.

'She's out,' he said, his voice low and gruff from all the smoke he'd inhaled. 'They spent ages trying to fuse her vertebrae and repair the damage done to her spinal cord, but there wasn't a lot that could really be done. So they've pinned the fractured bones together to try and keep it stable and prevent further injury, and she'll be on her way down just now.'

No one moved as we all took in what he'd said.

'So…' Ella said after moment. 'What about…? I mean, can she…?'

We all knew what she was trying to say.

'It's unlikely,' Jeb responded quietly, and I felt my stomach turn over. 'It's still too early to tell if it's permanent or not, but if she ever regains use of her legs then it won't be for at least a few months.'

I sucked in a great breath of air, feeling like I was suffocating, then forced myself to sit up straight.

'How can they not know? Are the nerves damaged or not?'

'They are, but when there's been trauma to the spine something called spinal shock can occur, kind of like a temporary inability of the cord to function,' Jeb explained. 'If that's the case then any paralysis will wear off once the cord has started working properly again, but…' He coughed. 'It's too dangerous for the surgeons to do a definitive check on Nudge's spine – it would risk hurting her even more. From what they can tell there has been permanent damage.'

'You saved Ari, though,' I said, refusing to believe that what I was hearing could possibly be true. 'He was _dead_, and you brought him back. Why can't Nudge get the same treatment?' I realised that my voice was rising, making me sound just slightly hysterical, but I didn't care.

Jeb shook his head, shrugging sadly.

'I don't know exactly what's been going on; I've been sitting up in the waiting room by the theatre, so all I know is what they told me when they brought her out. I would guess that Nudge's lighter bones make her vertebrae harder to fuse, and the avian DNA's influence on her nervous system will be affecting the options the surgeons have.'

Nudge was asleep when she was brought into the room across the hall from us; the dark-haired doctor who came with her – Dr Adams – went over the things that Jeb had already told us and confirmed his suspicions about Nudge's treatment, adding that the anaesthetic had worn off but that Nudge was now in a natural sleep that needed to be sustained for as long as possible.

'The first twenty-four hours after surgery are very important,' she said, scanning the group, her voice carrying the slightest hint of an Australian accent. 'Her body will be working at maximum energy to try and repair itself, so it's important that she stays rested. I understand that your… situation is somewhat unique, but I'm afraid I'm going to have to say no more than two visitors at a time, at least for the next day or two.' She smiled kindly. 'Dr Batchelder has informed me that you heal much faster than most patients, but this one is going to take some time, even so.' Pausing for a moment, she seemed to choose her next words carefully. 'This is not going to be easy for any of you. It's unlikely that Nudge will recover from this, and it's going to be difficult to deal with, especially at first. But keep in mind that this situation could've have turned out much worse. Sorry if that sounded patronising – I'm sure you know much better than me how things could have ended for all of you.'

Through all the panicking that was taking place in my head, I noticed that this was a doctor I could actually stand. I seemed to be meeting more and more of those as time went on. Go figure. After she left Jeb spent a while telling us about what had happened up in the control room, recounting the way Nudge had kept a watch over all of us as we raced through the School, how she'd erased our expiration dates from the system and saved him from the fire, the fight with Not-Ari and the struggle through the corridors. Despite how worried I was, I couldn't help but feel myself swell with pride when he told us everything she'd done.

I don't really want to talk about what it was like when Nudge woke up. She came around in the early hours of the next morning, whilst Jeb and I sat silently in the room with her, barely a hair's breadth away from nodding off ourselves.

Now, consider this: waking up in a hospital bed with an oxygen mask over your face would be pretty unnerving for anyone, and for those of us who happened to grow up in a lab undergoing horrible experimentation it's downright scary.

Nudge woke up in a hospital bed with an oxygen mask over her face unable to feel anything from the waist down.

Just imagine it for a sec.

The terror in her face was heart-breaking. I tried to talk to her, to calm her down, but within moments her breathing rate had gone way up as she entered a full-blown panic attack. The top half of her body thrashed wildly in the bed; her movements were limited by the hard plastic back brace that enclosed her lower torso, but she was still able to hit out at me and Jeb whenever we came close to her, and her terrified screams bounced off the walls. The others appeared in the doorway, looking horrified as medical people pushed through them into the room. Jeb pulled me back and hooked an arm over my shoulders, and I could feel myself trembling so hard it was as if my whole body was about to just fall apart.

They ended up having to sedate Nudge again so that she wouldn't "cause any further harm to herself". Dr Adams sat down with us afterwards:

'I want you to know that what happened with Nudge is not out of the ordinary for patients with spinal injuries,' she said, her voice calm and reassuring. 'I know it was very upsetting to see, but it's normal for patients to feel distressed upon first waking up. Her mind needs some time to assimilate the new situation she's in, and at this point it's just as important to monitor her emotional state as her physical one.'

The second time Nudge woke up was a much quieter affair; she slowly lifted her head, her chin almost touching her chest as she looked around at us – Dr Adams had caved and allowed us all to sleep on the floor in her room on the condition that we didn't crowd her too much – and eventually her eyes landed on me.

'Can I still fly?' she asked quietly, sounding so incredibly young that all I wanted to do was pick her up and hold her like I had when she was still a little girl.

I looked at Jeb, not knowing the answer to her question. He took a few steps forwards and laid a hand on the metal railing that went along the side of her bed.

'It will probably be different,' he said, his voice soft. 'You won't be able to hold yourself in the same way, and your balance will feel off for a while. But the nerves that supply your wings branch off above the site of the fracture. Your wings still work. So yes – with some adjustment you'll be able to fly.'

We all watched Nudge, on edge to see what her reaction would be. She let her head drop back onto her pillow, fingers brushing lightly at the sheets that covered her legs as she stared at the ceiling for a long moment.

'That's okay,' she breathed, her words barely audible. 'That's okay.'

Over the next week she slowly started to talk more, and Dr Adams came by regularly to see how things were going.

'There's still a long way to go,' she said to me a few days in. 'This isn't the kind of thing that someone just gets used to over the course of a couple of days. But she's clearly a fighter, and her conviction to fly again is a very good sign – it shows that she's in a positive mind-set rather than a negative one. Some patients with these sorts of injuries give up completely, but she's looking forwards. Very good indeed.'

I nodded.

'I wish I could say she hasn't had to get through worse things before. But she has, and she'll get through this,' I said, looking through the window of the door to her room.

Dr Adams studied me, a small smile making its way onto her face.

'She will, won't she?'

By the end of the week, the fractures in Nudge's spine had almost completely healed; the cord itself was still damaged, but the surrounding bones were strong enough that she could be sat up in her bed or in a wheelchair without worrying about any fragments causing further harm. Gazzy still needed to be careful about bending or twisting his body too much, but the row of stitches across his belly had given way to a thin, pink scar. Something really has to be said for the healing abilities of recombinants.

I expected resistance from the adults when I said that we were leaving, but Mom and Jeb seemed to feel the same way that I did, and when I spoke to Dr Adams about it she was surprisingly understanding. She knew we all wanted to get away from the hospital.

'Nudge is going to need regular physical therapy for a long time, to keep the upper part of her spine supported and reduce pain,' she informed me on our last day. 'I'm going to call ahead to make sure that the neurological team at your local hospital are fully briefed on the situation, and I'm getting a pack of meds prepared for you to take for the journey.' She grinned suddenly. 'I'm honoured that I got the chance to meet you and your family, Max, despite the unfortunate circumstances under which it happened. I wish you all the best.'

'Thanks,' I replied, shaking the hand that she held out. 'Thanks for everything.'

She nodded once and walked away, her white coat flapping a little as she went. Between her, Mom, Jeb, and the folks at the CSM, I was starting to think that maybe I'd given doctors a bit of a raw deal over the years.

Then we were being driven to a state-of-the-art medical transport plane, equipped with a full surgery and a team of doctors as well as the regular seating area and food cart. As we lifted off into the air, I looked around the cabin; Nudge was sitting upright in her wheelchair, braced against some special supports on the cabin wall, talking to Ella. Gazzy hadn't left his sister's side since they'd been brought back together, and he and Angel were across the aisle from me. She was curled up in the seat next to him, her head on his shoulder, her wide eyes blinking as she gazed silently around; she still wouldn't speak to anyone, still cried out in the night at the awful things that ran through her thoughts as she slept, but it seemed as though she felt safe with us. I was holding on tightly to the tiny improvements that sprung up in her as the days went by.

I sat back in my seat, letting out a long sigh. Maybe we were damaged, maybe we were going to need time to heal. Maybe we had been changed forever by all the things that had happened to us, but we were safe and we were together, and that was what mattered. It was over. We were going home.

**A/N This part was tricky to write. Thinking about how Nudge would be feeling about her paralysis and everything was a bit of a challenge, and fingers crossed I did it justice. Hope you like it. Review!**


	33. Chapter 32

**A/N WHAT? Did that really just happen? Did I really just post three chapters in one day? Apparently so. :P Enjoy! Oh, and I need to make a small disclaimer: I've used a quote from Harry Potter in this. I do not in any way own Harry Potter. Not in the slightest.**

It was evening when we finally tripped through the front door of our house in Oregon, Nudge's wheelchair getting stuck momentarily in the little ridge of the threshold. If it had been big enough, we would've gone to Mom's house, but there was no way that place was gonna hold two scientists, one all-human teenage girl, and eleven genetically-enhanced kids (count them – seven human-avian hybrids and four miscellaneous subjects. Kokoe was happier under the bushes in the yard than inside the house). Besides, Total had clearly been waiting for us.

'Have you any idea how worried I've been?' he shouted indignantly as we all crammed ourselves through the door and into the hallway. 'Beds empty! No note! Car gone – could've crashed – out of my mind with worry – did you care? – never, as long as I've lived…'

I stared at him, completely bewildered.

'What? Total, I-… _What?_'

Ella leaned over my shoulder from behind me.

'I think he's quoting Harry Potter,' she told me in a not-so-quiet whisper.

Total bobbed his small black head.

'I got bored while you guys were away, okay? Sue me. But seriously, what happened?' he asked, trotting after us as we moved through to the living room. 'You all look ready to fall aslee- _woah_.'

He'd spotted Nudge.

'Yeah, there's quite a lot that you need to get caught up on,' I said, slumping onto one of the sofas.

Over the course of the next couple of hours we recounted everything that had happened over the last few days. Different people took over telling different parts of the story, filling in the various gaps in everyone else's understanding of what had gone down inside the School: Fang explained how he'd been taken up to the aerial deck, one floor above the one where Holden and Star had been searching for him; Holden related the story of how the fire that eventually reached Nudge and Jeb had started; between the three of them, Ratchet, Dylan, and Kate told us all about their journey to The General's office and how they'd managed to apprehend her; Jeb jumped in to tell us again about everything Nudge had done to keep us all safe, how determined she'd been not to leave the control room until she'd finished her job despite the dangers of staying. Hearing the full story, it left me pretty stunned to see just how interwoven everyone's parts were – everything could so easily have turned out entirely differently.

Ella briefly went over the night out in the desert when she was kidnapped by The General (I refused to call her my mom in that context; they were most definitely not the same person), then it was Mom's turn. Slowly, shakily, she told us what it had been like before the tone had rung out through the grounds and collapsed the mental adjustments that had been made inside her head.

'It wasn't like there was a part of me trying to fight it all,' she said, gazing down at her clasped hands. 'It wasn't like I knew what I was doing was wrong but just couldn't stop myself. I didn't remember who I was before, I didn't know that the person I was being wasn't me. For those fifteen years, I _was_ that person. I thought that everything I was doing was right, I believed without doubt in the necessity of all my actions.' A deep crease was visible between her eyebrows. 'Then I heard that sound and suddenly it was like my whole personality flipped – I remembered everything that had happened before the School took me, everything I'd done as The General. The things I'd been so sure of a second before just disgusted me.

'It's difficult to get my head around. I've lived fifteen years of my life as a different person.' She looked up at us, her eyes scanning the faces in front of her. 'I can't believe everything I put you through. I am so, so incredibly sorry.' Tears welled up and spilled over onto her cheeks, and Jeb reached out to grasp her shoulder.

'It's like you said though, Valencia: you lived fifteen years of your life as a different person. During that time you might have been her, but she isn't you. It wasn't you who did all the things you remember doing.'

If I could have gone back just over a week in time and told the past-Max how unbelievably glad I was to have Jeb around, she probably would've punched me in the face to try and snap me out of it. But I was. I reckon that ever since I'd found out that he was alive, the first time he told me that I had to save the world back in the School all that time ago, there had been a little part of me tucked away somewhere that never stopped praying he was actually still on our side. Finding out how much he'd risked to try and help us, how he'd stuck around to make sure that my mom was saved, made that part of me – the part that was still ten years old and thought Jeb was the best thing in the world – jump up and down in triumph.

'There's still something I don't understand,' Fang said from the back of the room, and all heads turned questioningly towards him. 'Not too long before…' The corners of his mouth tightened slightly. 'Not too long before I left, I got a message. Said I had to help save the world.'

'That was me,' Jeb said, nodding slowly. 'I knew what The General had planned for the flock; she'd told me about her intentions to break you up permanently.'

Mom winced at the memory and I shifted a little closer to her on the couch.

Jeb cricked his neck to the side, grimacing as he considered his next words.

'I suppose I thought that it would serve as a reminder for you if you did leave,' he said. 'I hoped that you'd recognise a broken flock would never be strong enough to achieve what needed to be done.' He shrugged. 'You helped save the world by coming back.'

Star somehow managed to frown and raise her eyebrows at the same time.

'You sent him a message to try and get him to come back before he'd even left? How do you come up with this stuff?'

Her words lightened the atmosphere a little, and a few smiles broke out. Mom looked at Jeb, a trace of amusement replacing the guilt that had been there before.

'It feels like a strange thing to say, but thank you for being so good at going behind my back.'

I think that being back at home was just what we needed; like I mentioned before, hanging around in that hospital was kinda like being stuck in a time warp, where everyone just sort of floated around in a weird not-quite-there way. Getting back to the house meant that we were forced begin functioning properly again.

For the rest of the evening, everyone spread out into different rooms and took some time to get their own bearings back. Despite the fact that so much awful stuff had happened to us all, the tension of the last couple of weeks was fading, and every so often a laugh would ring out through the house. It was strange; it all seemed so _normal_ after the insane things that had gone down. Life goes on, I guess. Seeing as Mom was still technically the head of the School, she had been able to give order for all experiments conducted on human subjects to be discontinued. Even as we got used to being back, the labs and offices and testing rooms belonging to the School, Itex, the Institute, and the Doomsday Group were all being shut down or turned into shelters for the subjects they'd created. It was early days, and of course there were probably large numbers of genuinely horrible people still working in those places who needed to be weeded out, but it seemed as though all that scientific knowledge might actually start to be used for good instead of evil.

One of the best things about being back in the real world? Plumbing. The showers in the hospital had been fine for their general purpose, but being able to shut myself away in one of the bathrooms felt like just what I needed that first night back. With the hot water pounding down on my head, unwinding all the tension in my muscles, all I had to do was close my eyes for it to seem like, just for a while, I was the only person in the world. _Not to self: "me time" can be a good thing. A very good thing._

Once I was out, I cleared the steam from the mirror and pulled my fingers through my hair to try and get rid of the knots in it. My non-Eraserified reflection did the same, and I slowed slightly as I thought back to the times when I hadn't been so lucky to see my own face reflected back at me. _Those times are done_, I thought, touching my cheek in an echo of my panicked actions whenever Eraser Max had appeared in the past. _Done._

I'm really not the kind of person who draws a connection between having a shower and things being washed clean for a fresh start at life. But if I _were_ the kind of person to do that, I totally would've done it just then.

* * *

Even though I had spent the whole day feeling exhausted, I found myself completely unable to sleep that night. By around eleven o'clock the house was pretty much silent, but I was totally restless, pacing around my room until I heard a soft knock at the door; when I opened it, I was met by the sight of Dylan standing in front of me.

'Hi,' I said, taken aback. He'd kind of been avoiding me for the past week, so seeing him at my door wasn't exactly the first thing I'd been expecting. 'What is it?' Then I noticed the backpack he had slung over one shoulder, and my eyebrows furrowed questioningly. 'Um… Going somewhere?'

He gave a small smile.

'I reckon I am. C'mon.'

And with that, he turned and walked away from me towards the stairs. I stayed in the doorway, frowning after him as I tried to figure out what he was doing; when he realised I wasn't behind him he turned back for a moment and gestured fervently for me to get a move on. Glancing around as if might see some clue as to what was going on, I sighed and rolled my eyes before following him along the hall and down the stairs. He stopped by the front door and spun around to face me.

'Dylan, what is this? What's happening?'

He was silent for a moment, his gaze searching my face. When he answered me, his voice was calm:

'It's time for me to leave, Max.'

'_What_?' The word came out much louder than I intended it to, and I froze as I listened for any movement upstairs. Grabbing Dylan's arm, I yanked the front door open and pulled him outside with me, closing the door as quietly as I could behind us. Coldness seeped through my socks as we stood there on the front path.

'It's going to rain any minute,' he said, looking up at the sky.

'I don't care. You're leaving? Why?'

Dylan dragged his eyes away from the dark clouds and looked down at me, his head cocked slightly to one side.

'I need to move on. It was right, what you said in that house in Reno; I don't really understand what love actually is, so how can I say that's what I feel for you?'

'I never said that,' I cut in. Thinking about Reno felt like looking over memories from years ago.

'No, but you might as well have,' Dylan replied smoothly. 'And you'd have been correct. I mean…' He rubbed at the back of his neck, suddenly looking uncomfortable. 'What Fang did, back in the holding cell… You said it yourself, it was for you, not me. He did it for you. He was willing to give everything up to _not_ get you, to let you be with someone else. I can't get my head around it. Like, when he stepped forward I should've said something; I shouldn't have let him do it. But I was frozen.

'For a while I was afraid that I didn't do anything to stop him because there was a part of me that wanted to see him gone, out of the picture. But I realised that it was because I couldn't understand what was happening, couldn't even begin to get into the same headspace as him. It totally threw me.' He sighed and looked at me, his eyes narrowing as he thought through what he was saying. 'If that's love – and I'm pretty sure it is – then I really don't understand it at all. I think there's a lot of stuff that I don't understand.'

Rain began to fall then. It was the kind that went from zero to sixty in about three seconds, and suddenly we were being soaked in a downpour. Barely able to care through the surprise I was feeling, I crossed my arms and stared at Dylan through the rain.

'So, what, you're going on some kind of journey of self-discovery?'

He laughed.

'Something like that.' Taking a step closer, he reached out to take my hand. 'The thing is, Max, I still _feel_ like I love you; no matter how much I try to convince myself otherwise, it's not going away. Staying when I know that you don't feel that same would be too hard.'

'I'm sorry.' It was all I could think of to say. And I _was_ sorry, in a strange sense of the word.

Dylan gave an easy smile and let go of my hand, not looking at all like someone talking about how the person they had feelings for didn't feel the same way.

'It's okay. You know, if you'd fallen for me then you'd have been doing exactly what the whitecoats wanted. Not really your style, is it?'

I grinned at that, shaking my head.

'So where are you going to go now?' I asked, blinking rain out of my eyes.

He shrugged.

'I'm thinking I might go around some of the different branches of the School as they're disbanded and stuff; maybe I'll start my own group.'

'Sounds like a good plan.'

Dylan nodded and bent slightly to look directly into my face. His expression had morphed into one of anxiety, and for a moment before he spoke I was worried.

'Max, this is ending on good terms, right? Everything with us, I mean.'

I shook my head in feigned exasperation, giving him a light shove.

'Don't be stupid. Of course it is.'

A smile spread across his face and he held out a hand for me to shake. Rolling my eyes, I stepped past his outstretched arm and pulled him into a hug; after a few moments he drew back, walking backwards down the front path so that he was still facing me when he lifted a hand in parting.

'See you,' he said, his voice raised to be heard over the rain.

'See you,' I echoed, then as he turned to leave I called after him: 'And hey – good luck.'

He laughed and gestured upwards at the clouds.

'In this weather? I'm gonna need it.'

Turning away from the house, he took a few quick, long strides along the sidewalk, and then he was pushing off into the air, his wings whipping out to propel him through the night sky. What with the rain and the darkness and all, it wasn't long before he was out of sight.

I opened the front door quietly, trying to squelch as little as possible as I stepped back inside the house. Once the door was closed behind me, I stood in the hallway for a moment, going over what had just happened in my head; it didn't feel like a sad thing, Dylan leaving. It felt right, for him and for me.

As I headed towards the stairs, I caught sight of a figure standing by the big glass doors in the living room. Tensing, I crept quietly towards the doorway, trying to make out who or what it was. Drawing closer pulled the silhouette into sharper focus, and I relaxed a little as I realised who it was: Fang. During our week in the hospital, the two of us had kind of skirted around each other. It wasn't avoidance, exactly – we still spoke and stuff – but it was like we didn't really know how to be around each other all that well. Everything felt a little awkward, as if it had some kind of added pressure hidden behind it.

He didn't know I was there, didn't know that I'd seen him. I could turn around and go quietly up the stairs, and put off whatever talk was waiting for us until some other time. It was tempting.

But hey, a week ago I'd finally fulfilled my stupid destiny and saved the world. I'd faced more stomach-churning emotion in the last few weeks than I had in my whole life before that. I could deal with a bit more. And I was done running.

'Hey,' I said, walking into the room.

**A/N I know I've made you all wait a long time for some kind of resolution/talk/whatever between Fang and Max, but stay tuned, 'cause it's coming! (Review and it might come faster! :D)**


	34. Chapter 33

**A/N Wow, I wasn't actually intending for this talk to be so long, then it turned out that Max and Fang had a lot to say. Sorry for the repost of this one, but when I finished it last night I was uber-tired, and re-reading it this morning I thought that there were a few little tweaks I could put in to make it better.**

**Also, someone left a guest review that said 'HOW CAN YOU?' I'm not sure if they meant it as a compliment or were shocked by something I'd done in a 'how could you do that?' kinda way, so if that person is reading this then help me understand you! :P**

Fang glanced around as I moved towards the space where he stood in the unlit living room, a small crease appearing between his eyebrows when he saw how soaked I was.

'You were out in this?' he asked, jerking his head towards the window. 'You must be freezing.'

'I'm fine,' I said, rolling my eyes when he pulled his jacket off anyway and dropped it around my shoulders.

'What were you doing outside?'

I stared out of the window, watching as the rain drummed down onto the decking outside; a light mist, formed by the spray of droplets bouncing back when they hit the wood, blanketed the ground.

'Dylan's gone,' I said, not watching Fang for a reaction.

'Gone?'

My gaze skated across the garden and I shivered slightly as an icy drop of water from my wet hair slid down my back. I could feel Fang's eyes on me.

'He said it was time for him to leave. Said he was gonna go around the different Schools, maybe get together a group of his own.'

'Hm. Best of luck to him.'

That got me. I snorted and turned to look at him, aiming for derisive but probably just about managing amused sarcasm.

'Are you kidding me? "Best of luck to him"? Please. Whilst he was here you treated him like he was the devil incarnate, and now that he's gone suddenly he was a decent guy and you're wishing him the best of luck?'

Fang looked away from me, frowning.

'I didn't think he was the devil incarnate.' I made a small sound of scepticism and he shot a quick scowl in my direction before sighing and tilting his head backwards. 'I just thought,' he said slowly, 'that you and he-'

'Well…' I cut across him, the smile fading from my face. 'We weren't.'

We both stared at each other for a second before turning back to face the window, and a pause stretched out between us where the only thing I could hear was the hammering of the rain on the roof. It felt as though with every moment that went by he got further away from me, we grew more and more in danger of disregarding everything as being unfixable, too awkward and uncomfortable to salvage. My stomach clenched at the thought of it, and my throat was aching with all the things I'd bottled up since he'd gone; not just the pain of him leaving, but all the smaller things, the day-to-day upsets and frustrations that I usually would've told him about. When he left it was as if I had to take all the parts of me that he normally carried, the parts of me that I suddenly didn't have a place for anymore, and sweep them aside – it still felt as though I was keeping so much of me on hold, waiting to see if I'd be able to dust it off and bring it back out again.

We still weren't saying anything.

_Don't let this happen, Max. Don't let the silence do the talking for you._

'So do you wanna explain that little stunt you pulled back in the holding cell? "That's me"?' I crossed my arms and turned my whole body around to face him, raising an accusing eyebrow. 'I mean, what the heck were you thinking? How much of a moron do you have to be, Fang?'

He made a low growl of frustration in the back of his throat, tugging at his hair as he pushed a hand through it roughly.

'We talked on the mountain the night before, and I realised that I wasn't wha-... I couldn't…' He grimaced as he tried to find the words to explain his actions. 'Dylan was good for you. Seemed like it, anyway. When that whitecoat came for him-…'

I watched him as he went on, thinking about what he was saying. In a way, Dylan _had_ been good for me; at different points in my life, I'd needed different things to help me get through. When Fang had left, Dylan's raw honesty had been a comfort, no matter how foreign it had felt. I had been vulnerable and completely unable to deal with any puzzles or complications, and his constant openness and unwavering loyalty had fit the bill. The Fang I'd known before had been the quiet strength and support that I'd needed when I was ten, twelve, fourteen; escaping from the School, taking care of the flock after Jeb left, getting to grips with my destiny of saving the world. But he was a different person now – looking at him, I could see the changes. He'd made mistakes, and dealt with the consequences, and sworn never to make the same ones again. He seemed older. And I felt older, too. I'd learned a lot, even in the past few days alone, and I was calmer, like I understood things better, like I understood myself better. For the first time, I didn't feel like I was missing anything.

I was a new Max.

And maybe, just maybe, the thing that I needed right now, at _this_ point in my life right here, was the new Fang.

'-and I guess I thought… You're laughing,' he stated, his eyes narrowing just slightly at the corners.

'I am,' I agreed.

'Why? What did I sa-?'

I cut him off with a hand on his shoulder, laughing again.

'Fang. I never in a million years thought that I'd ever have to say this to you, of all people, but seriously, just…' I shook my head, leaning forwards. 'Just stop talking.'

I think I must've pretty much breathed that last word right into his mouth, because a split-second later I was kissing him.

He stood utterly still for a moment and I felt a stab of fear shoot through me, but then his head tilted and he was kissing me back, his jacket falling from my shoulders as his hands came up to hold me around the waist.

And that was it; we were ourselves again. The pieces that I'd fallen to when he left came flying back together, and it all felt so, so unbelievably _right_. Everything about him was familiar – his mouth, the ridges of his face, the curve of his shoulders as the hand that had been fisted in his shirt moved up to join my other one around his neck. Even as I was thinking all that, though, I was also thinking that it felt like I was kissing him for the first time; it brought the same crazy mix of elation and stomach-twisting nervousness.

Then again, thinking back to the actual first time in the cave (I'm fairly certain that the time I kissed him on the beach isn't really valid), this was definitely better – there weren't any "freaking out and throwing oneself off into space" shenanigans. This time I was completely sure about what I was doing.

I'm not sure how long we stood there kissing for, but after a time everything slowed down, becoming gentler, almost probing as we rediscovered each other. Fang's hands skimmed over me, sliding up my back and over my shoulders, grazing against my collarbone as they continued up to brush the hair back from my face before moving back down to my waist again, pulling me even closer against him. It was as if I could feel my heartbeat pounding through my whole body, right to the tips of my fingers as they traced along the side of his face.

Eventually we broke apart but kept close, foreheads resting against each other and noses still touching. For a few moments I was content just to stay like that, breathing in his air, but before long the incredible happiness I was feeling started bubbling up; I pulled back a little more so that I could look up at him with what was no doubt an embarrassingly dorky grin on my face.

'How did we get here?' I asked, and Fang gave me a look that was a mixture of confusion and amusement. His dark eyes shone with a kind of energy in the darkness.

'Well, _I_ was upstairs and then I came _down_stairs, and…' He trailed off and one side of his mouth quirked up in a half-smile as I rolled my eyes witheringly.

'No, I mean how did we get _here_, to this point?' I said, stepping away and turning so that my back was to him as I paced across the room. I felt like I was buzzing, drunk off, like, euphoria or something stupid like that. 'Think about it; think about everything that's happened, all the insane things that have been going on our whole lives. There were so many factors that came into it and fit together, and the slightest change in any one of them could've sent everything in a totally different direction.'

Fang's hands came around my waist from behind.

'Feeling philosophical, by any chance?'

I spun in his arms to face him.

'Seriously, though; what were the chances of it all ending the way that it has?'

I didn't even realise we were backing up until the backs of my legs hit the couch and I lost my balance, Fang letting go of me so that I fell back onto the cushions with a slight bounce. He scrutinised me for a second, looking thoughtful, then moved forwards to sit down too.

'You think this is the end?' he said evenly, eyes still on me.

I didn't reply, looking back at him questioningly, not sure where he was headed. He reached out and laid a hand over mine, his fingers absently drawing slow patterns on my skin as he carried on speaking:

'I have no intention of letting this be the end, Max. I plan to live a long life with you and anyone else in the group who wants to stick around.'

A smile spread across my face as he spoke, and I shook my head in mild amazement.

'You are the corniest person on the entire planet.'

He smirked in a show of feigned cockiness.

'You love me for it, though.'

'Yeah, I do.'

We both felt the weight of the words as soon as they left my mouth; they hit me like a punch in the gut.

The issue being that we'd never actually said… _that_ to one another before.

Okay, I mean, I guess if we're being picky about details then we _had_, but every time it happened it always seemed to be accompanied by incredibly unfortunate circumstances: I'd said it whilst under the influence of Valium, then again when Fang was lying technically dead on a table in Dr G-H's house; Fang had written it in the letter he'd left behind when he went away; both of us had said it and implied it and danced one hundred different ways around it during those awful, heart-rending talks we'd had when he came back. It kind of felt like none of those times really counted. They were too clogged up with whatever else was going on, too painful or desperate or downright humiliating.

'I love you.' It was said before I'd had a chance to think about it, and immediately I felt mortified that I'd just gone and blurted out something so weighty. Feeling my cheeks heating up, I cleared my throat loudly in discomfort and tried to look anywhere but at Fang, but his hand came up to gently turn my face back towards him. Then he bent his head and brought his lips to mine in a slow, deep kiss that I swear to God I felt all the way down to my toes; when he pulled away again, it took a second or two for me to bring the logistics of breathing back to mind.

'If you ever doubted how much I love you then you aren't nearly as smart as I give you credit for,' he said, his eyes lasering into me.

Jeez, what was I meant to say to _that_? Everybody knows that gushy talks are not my forte. I felt as though I'd been doing well so far – nothing had been broken and no one had been hurt – but I think I deserved some leeway on this one; I mean, we'd just gone from barely knowing what to say to each other to "I love you" in about five minutes.

Well, alright, not five minutes, that was a total exaggeration, but it had all escalated pretty quickly. That's the thing to take away from this.

So I really didn't have a clue as to how to respond. Unfortunately, my instinctive reaction to not knowing what to say is to cut to my good ol' dependable fallbacks: derision and sarcasm.

'When have you ever given me credit for being smart?'

I'm sure it would've sounded a lot more scathing if my voice hadn't come out all weirdly-pitched. Fang snorted, and I couldn't help laughing along with him as he cuffed me lightly on the shoulder and then wrapped an arm around my waist, tugging me over so that I ended up leaning back against him.

'I'll get you wet,' I warned, pulling against him and waving a hand to indicate my still-damp clothes.

'Bit late for that.' Fang gestured to the dark patch on his shirt from where I'd been pressed up against him before. I shook my head despairingly and conceded.

Neither of us spoke for a while as we settled into our position, and I rested a hand on the arm lying across my middle.

'Aren't you going to ask, then?' I said eventually. We both knew what I meant; I could tell that there was still a part of him that didn't understand why I'd decided to let him in again.

I felt his chest rise and fall beneath me as he sighed.

'I'm sure I will sooner or later. Not right now, though.'

We sat and talked for the next few hours, swapping stories about things that had happened whilst the two groups were still separate, revisiting memories; I squeezed Fang's hand as he told me about the time Maya had spent with his group before she died, his voice tight, and then a little while later he let out a real, proper laugh when I tried to tell him I'd learned how to cook.

'I have!' I blustered indignantly. 'I'm going to have to prove it sometime.'

'Do you have to?' he responded, still chuckling. 'I'd just rather go without being poisoned if it can be helped.'

So of course I had to elbow him in the ribs for that one.

A couple of hours in, when he did get around to asking what had brought about my decision to give things another go, I told him everything I'd been thinking about him and me and us over the last couple of weeks; how bizarre and painful it had felt to have him around again, how much I'd wanted to just give in at multiple times during the journey to the School, how devastating it had been when I thought he was dead, and how incredible it had been to find out that he was still alive. I told him my thoughts about how both of us had changed and recounted my conversations with Dylan. I spilled everything, and it took a while to get through it all, but by the end I felt more certain than ever that I'd made the right choice; Fang had been a part of me since we were kids in the School, and now he was so firmly ingrained into everything I was that I could tell he was something I would never be able to let go of.

He didn't say anything after I finished speaking, and when I twisted my head so that I could look up at him, I was blind-sided by one of his heart-stopping smiles.

'You've got to stop doing that,' I muttered, tearing my eyes away from him as I forced myself to turn back around.

'Doing what?' he asked teasingly, his voice saying that he knew exactly what I was talking about. He prodded my arm when I didn't reply. 'Doing what, Max?'

'You're such an ass.'

I stared resolutely ahead, feeling a flush heat my face again, but Fang shifted slightly so that I could still see him out of the corner of my eye, and then before I knew it he'd swung me around so that we ended up practically nose-to-nose.

'What's wrong?' he asked, his breath floating over my face as he spoke. 'Is it too distracting?'

I hoped he couldn't feel how hard my heart was thumping. This side of Fang was one that didn't come out all that often; on the one hand it meant that he was really happy, which was a good thing, but on the other it meant that his ability to drive me up the wall increased by about tenfold, which was definitely _not_ a good thing.

_Fight fire with fire._

I leaned in even closer, pushing right up towards him, and when I spoke it was low and deliberate:

'Don't flatter yourself.'

Quickly turning back around, I folded my arms and fixed my stare on the wall ahead of me. Fang chuckled and kissed the top of my head, and I couldn't stop a small smile from creeping its way onto my face.

We were well into the early hours of the morning now; the rain had stopped some time ago, and the sky was just barely beginning to lose some of its blackness. A few early-rising birds twittered tentatively outside the window, and suddenly my eyelids felt incredibly heavy. We stayed there, murmuring a few words at sleepy intervals, but before long I was out for the count, still leaning against Fang with his arms around me.

It was all disgustingly cute, really.

**A/N I enjoy exploring the more playful aspects of Fang's personality. :P I always kinda wanted to see a few more of their moments as a normal couple rather than as a bird-kid couple, so forgive me if I played with that too much here! I've gotta say, I've been waiting for this chapter ('cause I'm a bit of a hopeless romantic and never in a million years intended for the two of them NOT to get back together). I know I made y'all wait for it, but seriously, I've had parts of this written since, like, chapter 8. :P**

**Right, I reckon there's one more chapter left of this story. _Maybe_ two. Probably one.**

**Review, review, review! :D**


	35. Chapter 34

**A/N It took me a little longer than usual to write this - maybe it was my subconscious trying to put off finishing this story - but here it is, the final chapter. Enjoy!**

Sunlight streamed through the open window of the living room, pulling Fang out of sleep. He screwed his face up against it and ground the heel of his hand against his eyes in an attempt to rub away the dryness; he'd slept for about three hours, and on top of the chronic exhaustion that had set in over the previous weeks it made him feel almost queasy with tiredness. Max stirred slightly against him, not quite awake yet but caught in a shallow doze, and he felt a small smile tug at the corners of his mouth as he looked down at her, tightening his hold around her waist. _Worth it_, he thought, thinking back over the reason why he'd had so little sleep. _Definitely._ It had felt so good just to be able to talk to her properly again, almost as if he'd never been gone, never screwed up as massively as he had. Before she'd kissed him – _she'd_ kissed _him_ – the words had come so arduously, every one of them a potential mistake, the possible last straw… But then suddenly it was easy again, it flowed. Funny how something that seemed so out of reach could become reality in such a small space of time. All it had taken was that sign that said 'it's okay, stop thinking so hard'.

He let his head rest on the couch back, his fingers rubbing absentminded circles through Max's still-damp top where his hand lay just above her hip; his eyes wandered across the room slowly and came to rest on the window as he sat, content just to stay still and hold her, feel her lying against him. About half an hour later, her breathing changed as she woke up. She seemed to pause for a second, momentarily confused as she became aware of the weight of his arm lying across her stomach, then twisted her head around to look at him; a badly-concealed smile worked its way over her face, and her eyes crinkled up at the corners in just the same way that they always used to whenever she saw him, something he hadn't witnessed in a while.

'Well, hi,' she said quietly, her gaze wandering across his face.

'Morning,' Fang replied as he pushed some hair back behind her ear. 'Sleep well?'

She turned away, and he felt the muscles in her back tense against him as she stretched her arms out in front of her, holding a deep breath for a few seconds before letting it out in a long sigh as she relaxed again. Sitting up, she twisted around so that she was facing him properly, folding her legs underneath her; he missed the weight of her lying against his chest.

'Could've done with about ten more hours of it, but yeah.'

Everything was more tentative this morning, both of them making sure that the breakthrough of the night before hadn't been something that was only okay under the cover of the darkness. Her eyes still flitted over him, her face stuck in an expression that held a smile but managed to look calculating at the same time.

'You weren't cold?' he asked her, nodding towards her damp clothes as he sat up properly, resting his elbow against the back of the couch and trailing his fingers against her shoulder. For a moment her gaze was drawn to that spot, then she looked back at him and paused slightly before leaning forwards so that they really weren't that far apart at all; stopping a little way off, she took in his face for a moment before shaking her head.

'Nope.'

Moving his hand from her shoulder to the side of her face, Fang pulled her right in close, lingering for a few seconds when she was barely an inch away, just relishing her proximity, the almost inaudible catch in her breath. There was a moment when it seemed as though they were competing with each other, both of them refusing to give in before the other, then Max made a small _hmph_ of exasperation and pushed forwards. He could feel her smiling against his mouth as his hand moved back through her hair to hold the back of her head; whilst she used one hand to balance herself leaning towards him, her other came up to barely brush against the side of his neck before shifting down to grip at his shoulder.

'Ah_em_.'

The sound was loud and deliberate, and Max jumped away from him like he'd electrocuted her, her face flushing.

'Iggy!' she exclaimed, voice coming out higher than usual.

'Morning Max,' Iggy replied with a snigger. 'I was just wondering if you two would mind keeping it G-rated – that's really not the first thing I want to hear when I come downstairs. Besides, there are kids in the house.'

Fang remained silent, watching in amusement as Max's eyes nearly bugged out of her head.

'Um… Wow, um…' Struggling for words, she refused to meet his gaze as she rubbed at her forehead uncomfortably. 'The thing is…' She cleared her throat, and when she spoke again it was with forced indifference. 'You know what Fang? You were right – I am kinda cold. I think I'm gonna go change.'

Iggy plastered a look of innocence – or as close as he could get to one, at any rate – on his face as Max stood up and pushed past him to the doorway, her own face still red. Fang couldn't help letting out a small snort, which turned into a chuckle when she flipped him the bird over her shoulder, not looking back as she left the room. Raising his eyebrows at the sound, Iggy leant against the armchair that sat next to the couch, staring at Fang with unnerving accuracy.

'You're sounding cheery.'

'Am I?' Fang replied calmly, twisting a little to work out the tightness in his back; not that he would've swapped the night before for anything, but sleeping half sat up on a sofa was not the most comfortable thing in the world.

'Yeah. So what, are you two together again now?'

Fang shrugged, unable to stop himself from smiling at the thought.

'I dunno. Seems like it, but can't always be too sure with Max. Guess I'll just play it by ear.'

Nodding, Iggy crossed his arms over his chest.

'That's cool, man. But as the closest thing she's got to an older brother I feel like I've got to tell you that if you ever hurt her again the way you did before, I'm gonna have to make you pay. And it will be painful.'

'That a threat?' Fang asked, raising an eyebrow.

Iggy grinned and stepped away from the armchair.

'You bet your ass it is,' he said, his hand reaching out unerringly to slap Fang a high-five as he walked off towards the kitchen.

* * *

The heat in my face didn't cool off until I was upstairs and in my room, pulling out a clean top and sweats. Once I'd changed, I sat for a few minutes perched on the edge of my bed and mulled over the events of the past eight hours or so, sifting slowly through the memories as I relived them in my head. I remembered Fang's laugh as I walked away from him and Iggy; it really had been too long since I'd last heard that. Realising I was grinning like an idiot _again_ – I really needed to get a handle on that – I sprung up from the bed and made my way out into the hall, giving my head a sharp shake as I walked slowly past the different doors in my bare feet. I listened hard for any sign of the others beginning to get up, but it was only just coming up to eight o'clock and everybody was still pretty exhausted. No sounds escaped into the hallway until I'd made it right to the end, and I paused at the top of the stairs, trying to make out what I was hearing.

It took a few seconds for me to realise that it was a muffled crying, and I felt my forehead crease up with worry as I moved towards the last door on the corridor, opposite the staircase: Angel's. Turning the handle, I walked into the room and was met with the sight of two heads poking up from under the covers – one small with the fuzz of newly-growing hair spread across it, and one slightly larger, blond cowlick brushing against the pillow as the boy attached to the head shook with sobs.

'Gazzy?' I whispered, my chest tightening painfully at the sight of him. He turned slightly to see me standing in the doorway, and for a moment he tried to suck in his tears and look brave, but then his face crumpled and he started crying again, louder than before. I moved quickly across the room, kneeling down by the side of the bed and brushing a hand across his hair.

'Hey, hey, hey,' I murmured softly. Looking over him at Angel, I could see her eyes closed, her undersized body rising and falling gently as she slept. 'What's wrong?'

He sniffed, trying to calm his breathing enough to talk.

'I'm scared,' he managed to get out. 'What if Angel never gets better, and she just stays like this forever? _Everything's_ wrong!' His voice rose as he spoke, but he made sure it didn't grow loud enough to wake his sister sleeping beside him.

I stayed still for a second, crouched by the bed, then I pushed myself up onto my feet and nudged him lightly.

'Shuffle over a bit.'

He shifted up closer to Angel, and I slid under the covers and lay down beside him before letting him nestle in against me. Wrapping my arms around him, I stroked the top of his head and fought back the prickling feeling in my own eyes as he sniffled quietly; it wasn't fair. This kid had had so much more than his share of tears recently, and that was all on top of a life that had already been a million miles away from perfect to begin with.

'Alright,' I said softly. 'She's going to get better, Gazzy.'

'How do you know?' he retorted, his voice thick as he spoke through a blocked up nose.

'The doctors at the hospital checked her over. They explained everything to us and said it would just take a little time for things to get back to normal; you were there.'

'Yeah, but…' He trailed off uncertainly.

'But what?'

Gazzy squirmed slightly, and when he next spoke it was with a touch of embarrassment:

'But I didn't really understand it. They used big words and I didn't want them to think I wasn't smart enough to know what was happening to my own sister.'

'Ah,' I said, holding him a little tighter. 'Well, I'll just have to explain it better then, won't I?'

He looked up at me with a tiny, cautious smile and nodded.

'Okay, so the doctors said that Angel's got something called acute stress disorder, which is why she's been all quiet and having bad dreams and things. And that happens when someone's been through something that they can't really cope with, so their brain wants to shut it out and hole up in a cosy little nook away from everyone else. That's why she's not been speaking to anybody, because she's still getting used to the idea that she's safe and no one's going to hurt her. She needs a bit of time to readjust to being out here and with us again.'

'But what about all the tests they did on her?'

I sighed.

'Well, my mom got the details about the experiments that had been done on Angel, and basically it sounds like they were trying to find out how she could hear other people's thoughts. So they monitored her brain a lot, but the trigger for all the stress disorder stuff seems to be the more mentally-based experiments. What they did was they sent thoughts into her mind as hard as they could, and when she tried to block them out they just kind of forced their way in through all her barriers, so it gave her the feeling of not being able to control anything that was happening to her.'

I left a gap to give Gazzy time to digest what I was saying, then continued.

'The doctors told us that the best thing we can do is keep her feeling safe and comforted, and eventually she'll get back to how she was. It's like her brain started to work in a different way so that she could cope with what was happening to her, and now she's just having to re-learn what it's like to be around her family instead of being stuck in the School. Jeb and Mom are here in case anything happens to trigger any bad memories, so this is the best place she could be right now.

'And Gazzy, look at her.' I loosened my grip on him a little so that he could turn around to face Angel. 'She's getting a good sleep, and she's been eating properly, and the nightmares are beginning to die down. She started smiling again a couple of days ago. All those are really good signs that she's on her way to getting better.'

Gazzy nodded, not saying anything as he watched his sister sleep.

'How's your scar?' I asked him.

'Fine,' he said, twisting his head around to face me. 'How about yours?' He reached back to poke at the pink line that Not-Ari had left across my cheek.

'Fine too,' I replied with a little laugh.

'It looks cool. Tough.'

I leaned my head down to his ear as if I were about to tell him a secret.

'I _am_ tough,' I whispered. 'And so are you, and so is Angel. She's going to be fine.'

I leaned back to take in the picture of the two of them, and seeing them looking so young and wounded suddenly brought back a memory, one that I'd buried in the back of my mind a long time ago.

'Hey, do remember that song Jeb used to sing when we were upset or he was trying to get us to sleep?' I asked, and the Gasman wrinkled his nose as he thought back.

'Maybe sort of,' he said. 'I think I remember a few words.'

I gave a small nod and began to sing quietly, not quite hitting all the notes but managing to reach something that half-resembled a tune.

'_Hush now my child, don't believe that we're done,_

_Though the wind's getting colder and night has begun._

_There'll be clear skies at morning, you'll be safe and warm,_

_I swear that you won't feel a thing, I'll protect you from the storm._

_So hush now and rest, my love, don't be scared of what will be,_

_And I'll stay with you while you're sleeping, just you wait and see.'_

I was surprised by how easily the words came to mind, flowing through my memory after having been hidden away for ages. Clearly my singing needed some work, though, because the supposed lullaby had the exact opposite effect that it was meant to; Angel stirred as I finished the song. Blinking drowsily at us, she breathed in deep as she nuzzled up against her brother.

'Gazzy.'

The word was quiet, barely audible, sighed as she dropped back into sleep, but it was there. It was the first time she'd said anything, given any sign that she truly knew who any of us were. I felt my throat close up, and squeezed Gazzy's arm lightly before slipping out from between the sheets; he was lost in his sister, his wide eyes fixed on her, so he didn't even notice as I padded across the floor and left the room, closing the door silently behind me.

* * *

That evening, we just about managed to pack everybody around the kitchen table for dinner. Sure, we had to bring some side tables down from the bedrooms for people to sit on, but they worked just as well as any chair, and once everyone was sitting down you couldn't tell that we'd had to improvise.

Angel sat next to Gazzy, one arm linked around his for the whole meal. She hadn't said anything else since she'd whispered his name that morning, but it seemed as though the very act of saying _something,_ breaking her silence, had calmed her; despite the noise in the kitchen, she didn't appear to be distressed or unhappy. On the contrary, she sat and ate her lasagne with a small smile on her face.

The room was full of chatting and laughter, and at one point I stopped eating just so I could look around, take in the cheerful faces of everybody around me. _Everyone, safe and happy._ Fang touched my knee, and when I turned to look at him there was a questioning expression in his eyes. I realised I'd been sitting without touching my food for a while.

'I think I'm just going to step outside for a bit,' I said, lowering my voice so that only he could hear me.

He frowned slightly.

'You okay?'

I smiled at him.

'Yeah, I'm fine. Just going to get some air.'

He nodded and I pushed my makeshift chair back, trailing a hand across his shoulders as I left the table. Moving through to the living room, I slid aside the big glass door and stepped out onto the decking in the backyard. I breathed deep, taking in the crisp evening air as I thought about the people laughing and eating inside; I'd known some of them my whole life, some of them for a year or so, and some of them for less than a month, but they all felt like my family now. I think it would be difficult not to feel that way after everything we'd been through together. There was a rustling sound out in the darkness of the garden, and I spotted Kokoe bouncing happily through the bushes, raising my hand in greeting before turning to face back towards the house. Looking through the glass in front of me, I could see right through the open door of the living room, across the hall and into the kitchen; standing there, watching them all from a distance, I suddenly felt more at home than I ever had done in my life.

I knew our troubles weren't over, and I was right: in the years to come, I would still wake up in the night with dreams of the School haunting me; Nudge never did recover from breaking her back, and her wheelchair became a permanent addition to the house; although Angel slowly made her way back to herself, there were still moments when we watched her retreat down into her own mind, if only for a short while. But she could always be brought of it, and Nudge fought hard until she worked out how to fly again despite her paralysis, and Fang was always there to calm me down when I came around from a nightmare. We'd all been to hell and back, but we were still together and still supporting each other, and we'd managed to battle our way through everything that had been thrown our way.

Making my way back through to the kitchen, I bent to kiss Fang quickly before sitting down, ignoring the knowing smiles that were shot in our direction; I didn't care anymore. We'd finally been given a chance to just _live_, just _be_, and I wasn't going to waste it worrying.

* * *

And this is where I leave you, folks. To everyone reading this, thanks for sticking around. It's been an awesome, crazy ride, but everything has to end somewhere; we've all got lives to live, and it's about time I started living mine at last.

So up and away, fly on, and give 'em hell.

Max out.

**A/N The end. :D**


	36. Bonus chapter: Changing Rooms

**A/N So I posted this a while ago in a separate fic, but I've been sorting through my writing and I decided I wanted to keep all my After Angel related fics in one place. Which is why I'm tagging this onto the end as a bonus chapter of sorts. This focusses on a bit of interaction between Max and Fang a few weeks or so after the main story ends, and kind of shows the way in which the events of After Angel affected Max.**

Something was wrong.

The house was dark and still, and the only sound that drifted into Max's room was Iggy's snoring coming through the wall. Life had been calmer for the group in the past month than it had ever been before; since the disbanding of the School, there hadn't been the slightest hint of an attack coming in their direction. This was the point in her life where she had the least reason to worry, the least reason to be kept up at night.

So why was she still wide awake?

She sighed heavily, watching patterns move across her ceiling as the moon cast shadows of tree branches through her window. She liked leaving the curtains un-drawn, always had done; being able to see the sky from her bed was comforting, calming. Usually it helped her sleep. But not tonight.

Kicking her covers where they were twisted around her feet, Max raised herself up onto one elbow to get a better look at her alarm clock. 00:21. She glanced over her shoulder at the door, as if somehow the act of checking the time might have caused Fang to miraculously appear. No such luck. _Where was he? _It wasn't as if they had some kind of spoken agreement, she kept telling herself. Neither of them had ever explicitly mentioned the fact that he had ended up in her room every night since they'd arrived back in Oregon. But that was what happened. And he was usually here by this time.

It wasn't like there was no reasoning behind their unspoken arrangement: the things that had gone down in California – learning the true story behind everything that had happened to them, saving Dr Martinez, finding Angel alive, bringing down the School – seemed to have taken their toll on Max. Not during the day, of course. When she was awake she was still tough, still strong, still totally kick-ass. Night was a little different.

She grimaced and sat up in bed, rubbing at the back of her neck as she thought about the nightmares that had plagued her since they'd arrived home. Actually, perhaps 'nightmare' wasn't a strong enough word – her mom called them 'night terrors'. Apparently that was the technical term, and all in all it seemed pretty appropriate. Not that Max remembered exactly what happened during those nights when she'd come to, sitting bolt upright with Fang's arms around her as he tried to calm her down, but the feeling of utter fear lingered around her for a while afterwards, turning sleep into something that she wasn't really in a rush to get back to.

So, yeah, it had kind of become standard for Fang to appear in her doorway at around half eleven, just as she was going to sleep. Big deal. Everything else aside, it would've been nice to have him sleeping next to her anyway, to hear him breathing and feel the mattress dip under his weight, but with the added issue of the night terrors it had sort of become a given that he would turn up to – this was the part that made her cringe and smile at the same time – look after her.

Where was he now, then?

Not that she was worried or anything. No, 'course not. She wasn't _that_ irrational. The time for being paranoid and anxious was past – they were all safe now. If Fang wasn't there it wasn't because he'd been drugged or taken or hurt. It wasn't because he'd left. It was because he chose not to be there.

But was that just as much a reason to worry? she thought suddenly. Why would he choose that? Had she said something? Done something wrong today? She winced, wrinkling her nose at her own panic; since when was she the sort of mutant who cared so much about one person's opinion of her? _Quit being stupid_, she thought, giving her head a shake. _You haven't had one of those night terror things in about a week now. He probably just thinks there isn't any reason for him to be here anymore. _Which stung a little, to be honest. She would've like to think that he enjoyed her company at night just like she enjoyed his; the idea that he'd seen it all as a job with an end-date wasn't particularly flattering.

Making a small growl of frustration in the back of her throat, Max shoved her bed covers off and made her way across the room. Without really thinking about what she was doing she ended up at Fang's door, her eyes fixed on the grainy wood in front of her, hand hovering in the air by the handle. After a few seconds of just standing there, almost frozen, she let her hand fall and dropped her head backwards to stare at the ceiling with an exasperated sigh. _This is beyond ridiculous. Maximum Ride, you are pathetic. First off, it's _Fang_. If you want to go in, just go in. And seriously, you are _not_ the kind of person who lies awake at night unable to sleep until a _guy_ comes along to _take care of you_! Get a grip. _

With a quick roll of her eyes, Max twisted the door handle and stepped into the room. The sight that met her wasn't exactly what she'd been anticipating – she'd expected to see Fang asleep in his own bed like nothing was wrong, or Fang sitting in front of his laptop, frowning quizzically at her as he tried to work out why she was in his room at this time of night. What she got was a combination of the two: namely Fang sitting slumped forwards in his chair, head resting on the desk, sleeping face illuminated by the screen of the still-open laptop.

The tension drained out of her and she laughed under her breath as she closed the door, moving further into the room until she was standing beside Fang. Dipping her head slightly, she peered at the page open on the laptop screen. **It's been a while since I've posted here, so I guess I'm sorry about that. And it's not that nothing's been going on – quite the opposite, really – but we've all been kind of-… **His blog. Max looked away from the screen, turning her gaze downwards to Fang's head on the desk; his neck was bent at an awkward-looking angle, twisted around to accommodate his strange sleeping position. Laying a hand on his shoulder, Max shook him lightly, bending down a bit further to speak into his ear.

'Fang.' Then a bit louder. 'Fang.'

He woke almost instantly, eyes open and alert, a quick breath being drawn in as he sat up straight. Max crossed her arms in front of her, not really trying to hold in a smile as she looked down at him where he sat.

'You know, as cute and angelic and just adorably peaceful as you looked-' Fang scowled. '-I'm fairly certain it's bad for your neck to sleep like that.'

His scowl deepened.

'Thanks for the lesson, _Mom_,' he muttered, tilting his head from side to side to work out the stiffness in his neck.

Max snorted irreverently as she moved away from him to sprawl across his bed, her head resting back on her hands. His gaze followed her as she went.

'"_Mom"_? Isn't that kind of… wrong?'

Fang rolled his eyes in a long-suffering way before giving her a look that she interpreted as a mixture of 'really?' and 'you're an idiot'. His expression just made her snort again, and the two of them entered a strange kind of stare-off across the room; after a few moments, Max caught the flicker of a smile at the corner of Fang's mouth as he let out a breath that could almost be equated to a laugh and turned back to his laptop.

'So what, you're writing a boring post or something?' she asked, picking at the fraying end of her sleeve.

'Nothing I write is boring,' Fang replied coolly, eyes still on the screen as he tapped at the keyboard.

'Boring enough to send you to sleep.'

The noise of his fingers on the keys stopped for a moment, then continued a little faster than before. Laughing under her breath again, Max tilted her head back, the sound of typing becoming strangely calming; her eyes started to feel heavy, and she shifted up the bed slightly to find Fang's pillow. A frown crossed her face and she sat up.

'Hey.'

'What?'

'What's wrong with this pillow?'

Fang twisted around to look at her, his eyebrows raised.

'I don't know, what _is _wrong with it?'

'It's seriously lumpy. Totally uncomfortable.'

The corners of his mouth quirked up.

'Don't use it, then.'

Chuckling at Max's glare, Fang turned away from her, his hands moving back to the keyboard. Max continued to stare at his back for a moment, eyes narrowed, then her tiredness won out and she flopped down onto the bed again.

Next thing she knew Fang was standing over her, nudging her gently, smirking at her grimace as she woke up.

'"Totally uncomfortable", then?'

'Shut up.'

'So if you were tired enough to fall asleep on my "seriously lumpy" pillow, why did you hang around here?' He crossed his arms, one eyebrow raised. 'Come to think of it, why did you come through in the first place?'

His words were deliberate, the smirk was still there... He was messing with her, no doubt. Max bit her tongue, giving him a not-so-polite look as her mind raced to come up with an answer that might preserve at least a shred of her dignity. No such luck.

'You are such a jerk,' she said finally.

He sniggered at that.

'A jerk, huh?'

'Yes. You know why I came through and you know why I'm still here. You just want to make me say it. Hence, jerk.'

The words were accompanied by a look that dared him to push it further; his dark eyes gleamed a little with the challenge, but instead of saying anything else about Max's game of changing rooms, he sat on the edge of the bed and nudged her with his elbow. After a moment of stubborn refusal, she rolled her eyes and shifted over towards the wall that bordered one side of the bed, making room for Fang to slide in next to her. He raised an eyebrow at her when she kept a gap of a good few inches between them, dipping his head to stare at her from under his brow in a way that said 'don't be a pig-headed moron'. Sighing, she moved closer, letting him lay an arm over her waist and pull her into his chest.

Closing her eyes, Max twisted a little to make herself more comfortable in his hold.

'Still a jerk,' she muttered, and she felt a chuckle rumble through him at her words.

She didn't need to tell him that she was smiling. No doubt he already knew.


	37. Bonus chapter: Terror

**A/N A partner chapter that kind of follows on from Changing Rooms.**

_The floor was cold on her bare feet as she stepped cautiously along the corridor. Why was everything so dark? She could barely see the walls on either side of her, just having to trust her other senses to warn her if she was about to walk into something. But somehow she knew she was in a corridor. How did that work? Actually, 'where the heck was she?' might've been a better question – could she even remember arriving, the journey she'd taken to get to this spot, now, standing in a darkened hallway with bare feet and the smell of antiseptic in her nose? _

_ It always made her feel uneasy. The smell, that was. It made her heart quicken up, ready to supply as much oxygen as possible to her muscles if things came down to fighting or running away; she could almost hear the pounding in her chest as she took a few more steps along the corridor, feeling slightly lightheaded what with the adrenaline and the nerves and the smell and the… wrongness. It was just all wrong. She was in some building she didn't recognise, with no memory of how she'd reached it, and no idea how to get out or why she might be there in the first place. _

_And where was her flock? Where was her family? Had they been captured, were they hurt? _

_Max felt the muscles in her back tighten and she whipped around, staring back along the hallway behind her. Not that it did any good – she could barely see her own hand in front of her face – but she was certain she'd sensed something there. Standing dead still, she strained her ears for any sound. _

_There!_

_Was that it? Was that a slight shuffling coming from the darkness, a barely-audible sigh of someone – something – else's breath? _

_Heat flooded Max's face, her heartbeat thudding in her ears as she felt fear trying to arch its way across the curve of her head and down her back. She shivered, forcing herself to turn around and keep walking. Her body wailed in protest, muscles tensing, stomach clenching, but she told herself that there wasn't anything else she _could_ do; if there was something behind her then she'd rather walk away from it than towards it, and until she managed to find a way to turn some lights on in this place she wouldn't be able to see for sure if there was anything there at all. Of course, if it attacked her then that would move things along a bit, but that was something she'd have to deal with if or when it happened._

_As she walked, the sweeping sense of fear and unease just got worse. The smell was intensifying, making its way through her nose into the back of her mouth where it stuck, feeling as though it was choking her. The further along the corridor she got, the more disturbingly familiar it seemed, but somehow she still couldn't place the memory of where she was; it was as if that part of her mind had been censored, the thoughts pixelated and covered over, until all she could make out was a fuzzy mash of ideas that didn't quite make sense but at the same time made her feel kind of sick with dread._

_Max's ears picked up another shuffle that may or may not have been real, may or may not have just been her imagination, and she started moving a little faster, not worrying so much anymore about walking into anything. Her breaths were coming quickly now, her eyes boring into the blackness ahead of her as if she might be able to pierce her way through it. Was this what Iggy lived with all the time?_

_She hit a wall._

_Lights flashed on._

_Max whirled around, almost gagging on the smell which seemed to have suddenly hit its peak._

_And she knew where she was._

* * *

'It's the School!'

Fang was jolted awake by the cry, his gaze snapping straight to Max as he pushed himself up into a sitting position. Her eyes were still closed, but her face was twisting, twitching as she slept, the bed covers winding around her legs as her whole body jerked under the weight of the night terror.

'It's the School!' she cried again, her head shaking violently from side to side like she was trying to throw the dream off her. 'No, no, no, _no_, I _can't_! Don't… Don't, please… I- I can't… I didn't mean to!'

Worry made Fang grit his teeth; Dr Martinez had explained these to him, to both of them, saying that they were just a result of the stress that Max had been through working on her subconscious, that they'd die down after a while, but that didn't make it any easier to watch.

'Max,' he said quietly, reaching a hand out towards her. He ran through a mental list of the list things Dr Martinez had told him to do when the night terrors happened: 'don't raise your voice, keep calm'; 'don't mention anything that could be frightening to her, even if it's to say that it's not real'; 'touch her if she'll let you, but don't force anything – if she runs away, follow her to make sure she doesn't hurt herself, but don't try to stop her'; 'no attempting to wake her up, it'll just make her panic more'; 'keep telling her that she's safe, she's at home, you're there – the calmer you can make her feel, the quicker she'll come out of it'.

Max had rolled her eyes at all that, sending a mock glare at Fang as if to say she didn't need to be looked after. But that was only after the first one, back when there was a chance that it had been a one-off, that it would never happen again. Dr Martinez's words were meant to be precautionary more than anything, just in case.

Then another one had hit two nights later, and another the night after. They'd been living in the house for just over a month, and the longest Max had gone without having a night terror had been about six days.

Fang's hand was hit away fiercely just as his fingertips brushed against her hair. He took in a deep breath, steadying himself, feeling a frown pull down at the corners of his mouth as he watched Max's face twist in fear.

'Max, you're okay,' he said, his voice quiet and steady, reaching towards her again and resting his hand gently on her head. 'You're alright, you're not in the-… You're not in that place, you're at home, everything's fine…'

His words were punctuated with Max's own cries, and as her head jerked to the side again he felt the cold sweat that had broken out on her brow, but he kept talking, repeating the same things over and over in a low, measured murmur that he hoped she could hear on some level.

Fang felt his breath shaking a little in his chest; he hated it, hated feeling so _helpless_, so unable to do anything for her. This was _Max_, the girl he'd grown up with and fought next to and managed to fall in love with along the way and _God_, he was supposed to look after her. Not that he'd ever say that to her face, of course, but he was.

And right now he couldn't.

'_No!_'

His hand was flung aside again as Max suddenly sat bolt upright, the shout ripping from her throat as her eyes flew open. Her breaths came quick and panicked, her stare unseeing, unrecognising, even as Fang shifted where he sat so that he was that bit closer to her; she was still asleep, still locked inside her own mind.

* * *

_She felt as though she was suffocating on fear, watching them all move towards her, all so familiar, all horribly, unbearably hurt: Iggy's jaw hung open, dangling, the bone broken, held on only by the skin that covered it; Gazzy stumbled forwards with a hole gaping in his abdomen, blood spilling out from between his fingers as he pressed a hand against his wound; Angel's movements were lurching, broken, just like her wrecked body, crushed by the force of a whole building collapsing on top of her; Nudge slid across the floor on her stomach, her back bent at a grotesque angle, using only her hands to pull herself forwards._

'_Please…' Max begged, barely able to choke the word out. 'I can't…' Tears burned in her throat, her eyes, blurring the sight of her flock staggering towards her._

'_But you let this happen,' said Gazzy, his words coming out as a groan of pain as he moved. _

'_No, no, I didn't mean to!' _

_Her back hit the wall and Max felt ready to throw up. The tears were coming fast now, making tracks down her face as her eyes darted wildly between each of her flock members, her arms wrapped around herself._

_And then her mom was there, standing next to her as if nothing was wrong, gaze fixed on the advancing flock members._

'_Honey, do you want me to make them go away for you?'_

_She couldn't. She couldn't tell her mother to make her flock leave, to make them go away. They were her _family_. But now she was shaking hard, barely holding back screams as waves of fear like she'd never felt before threatened to overwhelm her. How could this be happening? How could she be feeling like this, how could her flock be so horrifically injured, how could they all be back in the School? And they were still stumbling forwards, slow, faulty, _

_Her mom was looking at her, waiting for an answer to her question. _

'_Mom, help me. I don't know wha-… I don't know, please, I can't, help me!' Max cried, her voice coming out loud with fright, raspy with tears._

'_Okay, darling,' her mom replied. 'I'm going to make it all go away.' _

_And a gun was in her hand, appearing seemingly out of nowhere, pointing at Iggy as he took another step, his jaw still dangling horribly. _

'_No!' Max shouted, a hand coming up to grab at her mom's arm._

'_But they're a problem, Max. They need to be dealt with.'_

_It wasn't real. It couldn't be. It was a nightmare, a bad dream, some kind of crazy simulation, anything. It just couldn't be real. Her chest felt tight, like something was holding her in a vice-like grip, and her breath was coming in hard gasps as she tried to fight against what was happening. _Not real, not real, not real…

'_Where's Fang?' she asked suddenly, the words almost echoing along the corridor. 'I need… Where…? _I don't know what to do!_'_

'_Oh, honey,' her mom said, sounding as if she was talking to a small child. 'Fang left, didn't he? He's not here.'_

_Max shook her head hard, clutching at her temple with one hand. _

'_No, no no no no, he said he wouldn't. 'The next time I leave you will be the day I die.' He _said_ that, he did!'_

_Her mom gave an airy laugh._

'_Of course, my mistake. There he is.'_

_And there he was, standing behind the rest of the now-stationary flock, his gaze firm and steady on her face, telling her it was okay, he was there._

'_But he _is_ going to leave you today. So I guess that means he needs to die.'_

_Then a shot rang out, a hole was suddenly barely visible in the dark fabric of Fang's shirt; his knees buckled, and as he fell Max heard herself screaming, heard herself shouting his name, then the names of all the others as time slowed down and she watched them get shot too, shot with bullets from the gun in her mother's hand, and alarms were blaring around her and she was on the ground feeling paralysed by the pain and the fear, and there was voice yelling in her head that she could barely distinguish from her own desperate, ragged, shattered thoughts._

* * *

Max was crying now, shouting out broken parts of sentences that Fang was sure must have been carrying through to the others' rooms. But he knew no one would come in; Dr Martinez had made it pretty clear that the more people there were crowding around, the worse things would get. Hence why he'd been given all the instructions about what to do when these things happened – if one person was going to look after Max, it might as well be the one who was pretty much guaranteed to be right there when everything kicked off, right?

'Fang! Fang, please, make it stop, _please_! Nudge is… And Angel… I- How is…? Fang, I need… Please, _please_…'

She sat there, fingers twisted together, eyes wide and glazed, her whole body shaking as she rocked back and forth. Fang gripped hard at the sheets beneath him with one hand, biting down on his tongue and using the pain to try and ground himself; seeing her like this was just so _wrong_. It hurt, an almost physical pain down in his gut that wrenched harder with each second that he sat watching her, Max, _Max_, being assaulted by things he couldn't see, couldn't fight for her.

'I'm here,' he whispered. 'I'm right here with you, Max, you're okay, you're safe, nothing's going to hurt you here. It's just you and me, right here, Max, you hear that? You and me, just us, no one else. And we're okay. I've got you, you're alright.'

She looked at him then, staring at him, her eyes seeming huge in the dark of the room. For a moment he thought she might recognise him, might be waking up, but then her whole body tensed hard enough to make her jerk back a little and terror etched itself into her face again.

'Don't go! No, I need- I need you! Please, Fang, stop, _stop it_!'

Her hands were swatting at the air, grabbing her night clothes, pulling her hair, leaving nail marks across her face as she grasped at her own skin, trying to hide herself, to shield her head from whatever she was seeing. She bent forwards, leaning down far enough for her forehead to touch the bed covers, then almost immediately she had snapped back up again, taking in one huge gasp of air before falling still.

Slowly, watching Max closely for any changes, Fang laid his hand over hers. She turned, and as she looked at him her face seemed to crumple in on itself, then she was sobbing, her shoulders shaking with the force of it.

'I can't do this.'

The words were whispered, only just audible, but they came out sounding so completely heartbroken that Fang almost couldn't breathe for a moment. Max didn't say things like that. She just didn't. So what the hell could she be seeing to make her _that_ scared, _that_ defenceless?

'You can. You can do this.'

Taking a chance, Fang pulled her in closer to him, one hand still holding hers, the other coming up to brush at her cheek even as she shook her head.

'I can't do it. I- I need Fang, please, I need… and he's not… and I can't do it. I don't know, and…' She seemed to choke a little, drawing in a strangled breath. 'They're all gone. They're all gone.'

Leaning into him, she rested her forehead against him shoulder, letting him wrap his arms around her.

'I'm right here, I've got you now. You can do it, it's okay…'

Fang wasn't entirely sure exactly what he was saying for half the time, just letting his mouth run in a way he'd never done before up until recently. After a few minutes Max's breathing slowed, and a little while later he felt the tension leave her, felt her wake up.

'Fang?'

Her voice floated up to him, slightly muffled.

'Yeah.'

'Another one, then?'

He breathed in slowly through his nose.

'Yeah.'

Max pulled away from him, pushing both hands back through her hair to get it out of her face. She looked like her again; she'd lost the glaze of fear and the unseeing stare had gone from her eyes.

'Well, that sucked,' she muttered, and he linked their fingers together, rubbing his thumb lightly against hers.

'You remember?'

She shook her head.

'No. But I feel kinda shaky and I think my heart's going at about a hundred miles per hour.' A pause. 'It wasn't _good_, at any rate.'

'Not at all.'

Conversation always felt strange after one of Max's night terrors, like they were both trying to stay superficial about it, to make it seem like nothing important. But her hand was still trembling in his, and she was staring at the bed covers in front of her, haunted by something she couldn't even remember.

'What was it about this time?'

Fang felt his eyebrows come together at her question. She asked it every time, as if she thought that maybe if she could work out what she was dreaming about then she'd be able to stop it from happening.

'You said you were at the School, mentioned Nudge and Angel. Don't know what I was doing, but you told me to stop at one point. Then you said you couldn't do it and that they were all gone.'

'What were all gone?'

He shrugged, tucking a strand of her hair back behind her ear.

'So it was pretty much the same old thing, huh?' She sighed, sounding slightly exasperated. 'You know, you'd think that if my subconscious was gonna torture me in my sleep, it could at least shake things up a bit, get some variety.'

The corner of Fang's mouth twitched up. He knew she was forcing herself to make jokes, make it appear as if she wasn't bothered, but it was good to hear the sarcasm in her voice.

For a moment neither of them moved, sitting in silence, then Max lifted the hand that was intertwined with Fang's, pulling his fingers up to her lips as she continued staring at the bed sheets. Her breath was warm across his knuckles. After a few seconds, Fang raised his other hand to her shoulder and gave her a light nudge, bringing her with him as he lay back down, wrapping his arms around her as they went so that by the time their heads had reached the pillows she was pressed against his chest.

A couple of minutes went by, then Max's voice whispered into the quiet again:

'Thank you.'

'Hey, it's what I do.'

She laughed a bit at that, jabbing him gently in the ribs.

'Apparently so.'

They didn't say anything else after that, and before long Fang felt Max's breathing deepen, her body relaxing against his as she fell back into sleep.

_Yep_, he thought. _I've got you. Just you and me_.

**A/N Hope you're all enjoying the holiday season! :)**


	38. Bonus chapter: Lessons in Falling

**A/N: Hey folks, I know it's been ages since I posted anything, but I've been wanting to write this one for a while and I had a spare couple of hours. I feel like I might be a wee bit rusty, but I had fun with it all the same! **

**This one looks at Nudge's thoughts on her paralysis and how it feels to be learning to fly all over again. Hope you like it. :D**

_Come on, Nudge. You're really close now. Try again. You can do it._

The air was still as Nudge looked out across the garden from where she sat, perched on the edge of Dr Martinez's roof. It was getting into the evening – _which means I've been at this for, what, six hours now? _– and streaks of pink were starting to make their way across the sky as the sun sank lower towards the tops of the trees that lined the horizon. Despite the lack of breeze, it was still chilly, and Nudge shivered slightly in her T-shirt, goosebumps rising on her arms.

'Go again!' Gazzy called from the ground, his eyebrows raised in a way that suggested this was all kind of fun and exciting, that they _hadn't_ been doing this for the better part of a day, that it _wasn't_ humiliating and painful and endlessly frustrating.

'We're here if you need us, Nudge.' Max's voice made its way up to her, and Nudge gritted her teeth at how patient everyone was being, her hands gripping the edge of the roof tightly – was she the only one who was tired of this? _Probably not_, she thought. _They're probably all sick of standing out here, waiting to catch me every time I fail _again. _They just think that if they show it then I'll go all nutty and give up._

_No one thinks that._ Angel's words sounded in Nudge's head and she looked over to where the younger girl was sitting on the grass, arms wrapped around her knees. It had been over a week since they'd arrived back in Oregon and she still hadn't said anything out loud except for that one time when she said Gazzy's name, but after the first few days her voice had started appearing in people's heads as she rediscovered her own way of talking to them.

Everything had changed. Ever since they'd gone back to the School for that last time, things were different wherever Nudge looked. Not that it was all bad – Max and Fang were all happy and together and stuff, Dr Martinez was back and not brainwashed anymore, Angel was alive and with them – but they'd all been damaged by the experience. Max had started getting those nightmares, and Holden wouldn't go near an open flame anymore, and Dr M would just stop what she was doing every so often and close her eyes and let out a deep breath as memories of the things she'd done as The General came back to her. They all still carried the weight of the things they'd seen and done and been put through in that place.

_Except for me I guess the word 'weight' means something a bit different, _Nudge thought, looking down at her feet where they dangled uselessly off the side of the house. Her legs were already starting to look skinny, the muscles wasting away from lack of use, and her pants were kind of baggy around her thighs, loose around her hips. That got her; it seemed really dumb to complain about clothes after all the stuff the flock had gone through, but fashion had always been her _thing_, and the thought of having to get rid of her cute jeans and go searching for some pants that would actually fit legs that were way too skinny for their length kind of made her want to cry.

She was going to have giraffe legs, all scrawny and long and weird. How did giraffes even walk on those things? Surely they couldn't be strong enough to hold their entire weight, especially with those massive long necks. And how did their necks get so long in the first place, anyway? Did they start out as horses or-?

_Stop that. _Nudge shook her head. _You're letting your thoughts run away with you again. No one cares about giraffes. I mean, they're kind of cute in a stretchy way… But that's completely not important right now. Focus. This is lame. You're lame. Literally. The _least_ you can do is learn how to fly again. _

'Okay, ready?' she called down to the waiting flock.

'Ready.'

Drawing in a deep breath, Nudge braced her hands against the edge of the roof and pushed herself forwards. Her wings snapped out as she dropped into open space, and for a second they caught air and she was gliding, then her dead legs swung down beneath her, their bulk pulling her suddenly towards the ground. Her whole body jolted and lurched as Nudge tried to regain control, tried to adjust to the new distribution of weight; working her wings as hard as she could, she managed two awkward flaps before the wild swinging of her legs got the better of her and she plummeted down.

Max and Fang raced forwards to catch her, but her knees still slammed into the ground as she landed, their hands the only things stopping her from face-planting.

'You okay?' Max asked, wrapping an arm around Nudge's back to keep her held upright.

'I don't know,' Nudge replied dully. ''S not like I can feel any pain there.'

There was an uncomfortable silence as the rest of the group shot glances at each other, unsure how to respond.

'You're looking way better than before, Nudge,' said Kate uneasily. 'You'll probably get it in the next few tries.'

'Can you get me my chair?'

Max winced.

'You're really close, sweetie, don't give up just n-'

'I want my chair.'

Another silence. Then Gazzy gave a half-hearted shrug and walked away from them to the spot where the wheelchair had been left, his old sneakers scuffing along the ground. Max slipped her other arm behind Nudge's legs and lifted her smoothly into the seat as Gazzy brought it to a stop in front of them. Then the group stood back, their apprehensive faces looking down at her where she sat. She hated that, the quiet. She'd _never_ liked silence but now that it was because of her it was even worse. It was as if they thought she was a bomb, ticking, just waiting to go off, ready to go at the first trigger, and none of them knew how to diffuse her. Iggy and Gazzy were useless here.

'I don't want to do this anymore,' Nudge muttered, looking down at her hands where they lay on her unfeeling lap. She heard the others shifting uncomfortably but kept her eyes trained resolutely downwards.

'You don't want to keep trying?' Max clarified, her voice careful, slow. Nudge shook her head.

'It's not working.'

'But that doesn't mean it's not _going_ to work. If you just keep trying-'

'I _have _been trying. We've been out here for hours, and I keep throwing myself off the roof and I keep _not flying_.'

'What's going on?'

Nudge lifted her head to see Jeb striding across the lawn, his glasses glinting in what was left of the day's light.

'You said I could still fly. You said I could and I've been trying and nothing's happening.' She could feel tears starting, the pressure in her head and the prickling in her eyes. It wasn't fair; she was _born_ to fly. Flying was the reason she existed, why she was alive, what she'd been made for. And now she couldn't do it.

Jeb stood motionless for a moment, then glanced around at the others and made a slight shooing motion with his hands. They backed off, moving away from her and towards the house. Nudge watched Max and Fang's fingers intertwine as they walked across the grass, then her gaze was pulled back to Jeb's face as he cleared his throat and crouched down in front of her.

'Yes, I said you'd fly again. And you will. But you have to learn, just like you did when you were young, and that's going to take some time. More than the three days you've been trying this for, at any rate.'

He sighed when Nudge didn't respond, tilting his head back to look up at the darkening sky.

'Do you remember when you learned the first time?'

Nudge blinked as he looked back at her.

'How many times did you hit the ground before you managed to miss it?'

'Um… A bunch?'

'Exactly.' Jeb smiled, his eyes going all small and crinkly like they used to do when they were living with him in Colorado. 'I think that this isn't about to learning to fly so much as it's about learning to fall. Right now the fear and embarrassment of not succeeding are weighing you down; your head's all filled with worry and it's keeping you from getting your rhythms right. Let it go. If you crash, that's okay, and it doesn't mean that you're failing – it means you're trying, and eventually you'll stop falling and start flying again.'

There was quiet for a moment as Nudge stared at him. Then she nodded.

'Okay.'

Jeb grinned at her and laid a hand on her shoulder as he stood up, turning towards the house and calling Fang over so that he could fly Nudge back to the roof.

Once she was sat safely up there, Fang dropped down and he and Max took their positions on the ground, ready to try and break her fall.

'Don't.' Nudge called down. 'Move out of the way.'

The two of them stared up at her and then turned their gazes towards Jeb as if to ask 'what did you _say_ to her?' His eyes had widened and there were deep creases along his forehead.

'Um, Nudge? When I said you need to learn how to fall again, this wasn't exactly what I meant.'

Nudge shrugged.

'Why not, though? That's how we did it when we were younger, and that worked even if we _did _end up with a whole bunch of cuts and bruises and stuff. And if you think about it then that doesn't really matter that much anyway because we heal really fast and it's not as if I can do much more damage to myself than what's already been done. I mean, I broke my back. What else do I have to lose?'

'Not a lot since it looks as though you've already lost your mind,' Iggy quipped from his spot on the ground.

'Seriously, move back. It's okay.'

Max and Fang looked at each other for a moment, their faces flitting through multiple expressions as they conversed silently. Max frowned, her eyes skipping back up to Nudge for a moment before moving back to Fang; he shrugged slightly and her face rearranged itself into a scowl. Nudge could hear her exasperated huff from her perch, and as the two older flock members moved out of the landing zone, she could have sworn that Fang shot her a fleeting, barely-there wink.

_Okay, here goes. _She thought to herself. _Now this is real. Come on._

And she pushed herself off the roof.

Crashing hurt. Her arms flew up to try and break the fall, and when she hit the ground the impact sent a jarring spasm through her whole body, making her feel as though she'd just been jolted by a few thousand volts of electricity (which, you know, she could say because it had actually happened to her before – she knew how it felt).

The shouts of the others rang in her ears, slightly fuzzy through the pounding in her head, but she was laughing. Laughing because suddenly she was back in Colorado, falling off that big rock they used to use when they were learning how to fly. There was something strangely nostalgic about the pain of hitting the ground, the scrapes along her arms, the tentatively moving each part of her body one after the other to see if anything was broken. By the time Max reached her, Nudge was propping herself up on one bruised and bleeding arm and grinning at the rest of the flock.

'Is she laughing or crying?' Iggy questioned.

'Laughing,' replied Gazzy with a strange mix of concern, perturbation, and amusement on his face.

Iggy's eyebrows rose and he drew in a breath.

'Well, that's it, then. We all knew it was gonna happen someday. Nudge has cracked.'

'Perhaps,' she replied, laughter still in her voice, 'but I think I've got it now.'

'Nudge, are you kidding me, you basically just threw yourself off the roof! Are you okay, is anything broken?'

'I'm fine, Max. I mean, I don't know about my legs 'cause I can't feel them and all that – it's really strange knowing that you've hit something but not being able to feel it, you know? Like, what you're seeing and what you're feeling don't match up. It's the same as in those movies where the dubbing's really bad and the words don't come out at the same time the people's mouths move an-'

'Jeez, she's okay.' Ratchet's irritated voice came from inside the house. 'Just shut her up already.'

Nudge snorted then looked up at Max's perplexed face.

'So yeah, I don't know about my legs but the rest of me's fine. And I'm going to do it again.'

Max's eyes practically bugged out of her head.

'You're not serious. No. No, you're not doing it again.'

'Yes, I am.

'No, you-'

'She should do it again.'

Fang's face was impassive as Max turned to look at him, her expression incredulous and heated.

'What?' she demanded.

Dark eyes trained themselves on Nudge as Fang replied.

'She should do it again. She's the only one who knows what it feels like to fly the way she's flying. We can stand here and say that she's getting close all we want, but she's the only one who can actually feel it. If she thinks that this is the way to get airborne again then we should trust her.'

When Max spoke next it was through a clenched jaw; Nudge could see the muscles squeezing in at the sides of her face.

'That was a nice little speech Fang, but I am not going to say that this is alright.'

'I'm going to do it again anyway,' Nudge piped up from the ground, and Max threw her arms up in frustration.

'God, does _no one_ listen to me anymore?' Her hands moved to cover her face and she took a few deep breaths before looking up, eyes flicking between Nudge and Fang, expression morphing from anger into anxiety. 'I am not comfortable with this.' Her voice was almost – _almost _– pleading. Neither of them responded, both continuing to watch her as she fought some kind of internal battle, then eventually her stare fixed itself on Fang and a hardness came into her face. A hand moved up and her next words were accompanied by a couple of hard pokes to his chest. 'If she gets hurt I am holding you responsible.'

Fang's eyes gleamed as his hand met Max's against his chest and there was a quirk in the corner of his mouth as he dipped his head a little.

'Whatever you say,' he said, an exaggerated placating tone behind his words.

Max scowled at him momentarily before letting out a deep sigh and dropping her head down so that her chin was almost touching her chest. Nudge heard her muttering under her breath in a way that sounded suspiciously as though she were cursing the boy in front of her, then she lifted her head, eyes closed, and waved the hand Fang wasn't holding sharply as if to say 'well, get on with it, then'.

Nudge grinned as Fang stepped back from Max and bent down to lift her from the ground. A short run-up gave him the momentum he needed to launch himself into the air and fly the two of them up to the roof for what felt like the hundredth time that day.

'Thanks,' Nudge whispered as he got her settled on the ledge that she'd been using. Fang didn't respond, but she noticed that his eyes were crinkled slightly at the corners when he turned to join the others back on the ground, leaving Nudge sitting on her own.

_Good luck_, said Angel's voice in her head.

_Not gonna need it_, she replied. _This time when I hit the ground it's going to be on my terms. It's going to be a landing, not a crash._

Her wings twitched behind her. Despite the dark sky visibility was good, and a little wind had picked up. Perfect conditions. She was so ready to fly again.

Nudge gripped the edge of the roof, took a deep breath, and closed her eyes.

Then she let herself fall forwards into the open air.

**A/N: Let me know what you thought! :)**


	39. Bonus chapter: Breathe in Deep

**A/N Hello all! Whew, it's been a while since I've posted anything on this story, but I've got a new one-shot for you! I love developing characters, particularly if they're ones who don't have that much revealed about them in the actual books - it leaves so much scope to play around with. **

**When I first wrote the scene back in chapter 5 with Star asking Max about how it felt to know Maya was dead, I didn't think much more would come of it. But recently thoughts about Star's past have been niggling at the back of my brain, and I decided that I need to find out what her life had been like before joining the flock. Then this happened. **

**Quick disclaimer: obviously Star, Kate, and all the other flock members belong to James Patterson, but this one-shot is set in the 'After Angel' universe, as it were.**

**Enjoy!**

People sucked.

She learned that pretty early on. It wasn't as if she was short on subject matter; it doesn't exactly help your confidence to grow up knowing that your mom ran out on your dad barely six months after you were born. The fact that she took your twin and left you behind is really just insult on top of injury.

Her dad was okay. Good enough. He made good money, they lived in a nice house in the suburbs, and he took care of her and put food on the table and sent her to an esteemed school. He tried. But parenting didn't come naturally to him. He was never the 'let's sit down and talk it out' kind of dad, and even though he attempted over and over again to have real, proper conversations with her, he just seemed so awkward that it made her feel sorry for him, and feeling sorry for him always led to feeling mad at him for _making _her feel sorry for him. So by the time Star was ten they'd kind of settled into an 'I won't ask if you won't tell' kind of situation; she didn't let him know when something wrong, he didn't ask about her problems, and they were both better off for it, she was sure.

It wasn't as if she didn't care about him – he was her dad, she couldn't help it – but she just… God, she just couldn't stand him. She couldn't stand how _weak _he was, the fact that he couldn't find it in himself to man up and be a father.

She hated her mum for leaving, for not trying hard enough. She hated her dad for needing to try as hard as he did. They were just opposite sides of the same coin to Star.

Of course, that hadn't always been her name. Her parents might have been total let-downs, but who in their right mind would name their kid 'Star'? No, that name had come in middle school, when it started to become obvious that – for want of a less clichéd phrase – she wasn't like the other kids. Perhaps a part of her had hoped she could just be left to get on with her own life, get good grades so that she could leave home as soon as possible and start out on her own.

But no.

Because people sucked.

Less than a month into the school year her peers caught onto her quick mind and short temper, a combination that thrilled some of the more unruly students. A kind of game formed, an unspoken contest to see who could get the biggest rise out of her, who could push her the furthest, so one morning when their maths teacher gave her back yet another perfect score accompanied with the phrase 'you're a star', there was really no other way things could have gone.

Star became her name, her identity; within no time at all her old name had been completely discarded by her fellow students, and Star was all she was. It wasn't too long before she stopped fighting it. If they wanted to provoke her, to get under her skin, to see her snarl and kick out and fight back, then she was going to play them one better. So she embraced the name, taking it on in her own head until she didn't even feel like her old name anymore, and with that came a strange shift in power – suddenly she was stronger, less manic in her anger and more tactical in the blows that she dealt out. Suddenly people weren't laughing anymore when she lost her temper. It wasn't exactly respect, but fear was a decent enough alternative. At least it meant she got left alone.

Then one day, a few years down the line, she came home from school and met her mum for the first time. Or at least the first time that she could remember.

Star could've gone her whole life without that meeting. She could've lived happily without the image of that dishevelled, crying woman sitting at the kitchen table burned into her mind; she'd seen a couple of pictures before, and that was more than enough for her. But life was a bitch.

It was the first time in a long time that she'd felt truly uncertain, standing there in the doorway, looking at her parents – her _parents_, both of them, in the same room – as they turned and stood up abruptly at the sight of her. Her father rubbed a hand across his face, and she felt a distant pang in the depths of her chest, because sure, he always seemed kind of fragile and tired, but since when did he look so _sad_? She laced her fingers together, cracking her knuckles in the way that had become a habit for her whenever she felt awkward.

This was so out of her comfort zone. There were too many emotions running through her head, and she didn't know what to do with them all. Some of them didn't even feel like hers. Yes, there was the anger and bitterness she was used to feeling at the thought of her mother, the niggling annoyance that ate at her whenever her father was around, the confusion, the doubt, the vague sense of pity she felt for the people in front of her. But there was also this intense sense of longing mingled in with it all; it was as if something hidden and primal was pounding at her insides, crying for a life where her mum was around and her dad was actually capable of talking to her, a life where it wasn't jarring to see the two of them together.

Definitely out of her comfort zone.

'Charlotte.' Her mum's voice cut into the silence. 'I thi-'

'Star,' she interrupted quietly. 'It's Star. No one's called me Charlotte in ages.'

A look of confusion crossed the woman's face, but she gave a faint nod before continuing.

'Um, okay… I, um… Something happened. I think you might want to sit down.'

'I'm fine here.'

'Star…' her dad began, but her gaze flickered over to him and something in her face must have made him pause. She wasn't surprised – she could feel a kind of desperation spreading through her, a need to be somewhere else, somewhere that wasn't here. Her fingers started to ache as she tugged at them, hard, trying to find a joint that she hadn't cracked yet.

Her mother took a few quick steps towards her then seemed to catch herself, hesitating just a couple of feet away from Star.

'Okay,' she breathed, eyes filling with fresh tears. 'Okay, well… Cha-… Star. This morning I got a call from the hospital. Rachel was out last night and…' She took a shaky breath. 'Someone found her passed out in a back alley. She'd taken something, too much of something, and they took her…' The woman's voice cracked, her face twisting around the words. 'They took her to hospital but they couldn't… They didn't, they couldn't…'

Star's dad moved forwards and wrapped an arm around her mother's shoulders.

'They couldn't save her,' he finished gently. 'She passed away early this morning.'

For a moment, the only sound in the room was her mother's sobbing. The sound grated at Star's ears, rasping through the mess of thoughts in her head, and she just wished that the woman would shut up for a second to let her think.

'Rachel,' she said eventually. 'Rachel as in…'

'Your sister,' her dad nodded, his eyes glistening, mouth pressed into a tight line. 'Your twin.'

Another few moments of near-silence followed as Star dropped her gaze to the floor, chewing at her lip and still pulling on her fingers. Then she took a breath in, lifted her head, and gave a quick nod.

'Alright.'

She'd left the room before her dad could reply.

He tried multiple times over the next year or so to get her to open up and talk to him about how she felt, but the truth was that she didn't really understand it herself. She'd never known her sister, never met her, and any pictures she'd seen had been of the two of them as babies, barely a few months old. Not enough to form any kind of attachment. Not enough to make her feel as though she knew the girl who'd been just a bit too trusting or a bit too stupid or a bit too unhappy and taken those drugs.

But at the same time she felt so… _affected _by it, in a way that she didn't want to think about or talk about or try to understand. It was almost disturbing, how much it affected her. Because somehow, without ever having it in the first place, she'd lost something. There had been someone out there who at one time was literally a part of her, who shared her face and her genes.

They'd been the same. Or the same but different, anyway. They'd had the same DNA. So that girl was kind of a part of Star. And then she was gone.

Any normal person would think that was enough inner conflict and unhappiness and tragedy for one life, that maybe after all that, Star would catch a break.

But, again, no.

Because, _again_, people sucked.

Some more than others, of course. The kids at school sucked in a kind of insignificant way, a minor annoyance once she figured out how to deal with them. The people who shot her and that girl Kate with sedatives in the museum bathroom and threw them in the back of a van headed to hell on Earth were on a whole new level of sucking. Those guys could represent the planet in an intergalactic suckfest.

Her time in the lab wasn't anything particularly special relative to the stories she'd heard since. They injected her with various concoctions, they forced her to complete tests and assessments and workouts that left her shaking and throwing up whatever she had in her stomach after the pathetic excuses for meals that she was given in that place. They made her run, faster and faster each time as the treatments they were giving her started to take effect, they made her fight, they made her ache in places she didn't know she had. Same old run-of-the-mill story that you'd hear from any mad scientist's plaything.

The only thing that Star saw as special in her story was Kate. Completely unexpectedly, this girl who had barely crossed her radar in the ten years they'd been at school together was suddenly the most important person in her life. Kate became a point of focus for Star, something that she could train her thoughts on and use to block everything else out during times when she was afraid or in pain or being pushed light-years beyond her limits; as long as she stayed in control, stayed conscious, stayed _alive_, Kate wouldn't be on her own. Looking back, Star often wondered how this person managed to get under her skin in a way that no one else ever had. Perhaps it was the extreme circumstances that they'd been thrown into together, perhaps it was just Kate being _Kate, _but over the months that they spent in that place, Star found herself slowly opening up to the other girl.

'I can't breathe,' Kate gasped, her shoulders hunching forwards, knuckles white as she desperately tried to pull some air into her lungs.

'Kate, hey, hey, calm down.' Star's voice carried across the space between their cages in a loud, urgent whisper. 'You need to calm down. You feel like you can't breathe because you're breathing way too fast – you're gonna pass out if you keep doing that. Slow it down, take it easy, breathe in deep.'

'I can't!' The words were torn out of Kate's throat in a half-shout, followed quickly by a coughing fit that only intensified her struggle to breathe properly. Her whole body was shaking from the exhaustion that the panic attack was bringing, and her face was wet with tears that just wouldn't stop.

'Damn it, Kate, get a grip!' snapped Star. 'You _can_ and you _will_ because if you don't I'm going to slap you so hard next time you're within reaching distance that you'll feel it for the next year.'

Her words were met with some more shallow, rattling breaths that only got louder as time passed. Cracking her knuckles, she moved right up to the wall of her cage, pressing herself against the bars to get as close to her friend as she could.

'When I was younger, just starting to talk, everything that moved was called a duck,' she said, her voice quiet, eyes focussed on Kate. 'Didn't matter what it looked like, how many legs it had, any animal was a duck. Cats, dogs, horses… I called all of them ducks.

'And I had a twin sister. I never met her, but she died about a year ago. It was really weird and it got to me more than I ever let on to my dad.

'And…

'And that time back in seventh grade when Michael Ashton got in trouble for letting the frogs in the biology room out, that was actually me. I thought it would be funny. And it kinda was. I always thought he looked a bit like a frog, too.'

'What are you doing?' Kate asked, her breath wheezing with each word.

'I'm distracting you, so just listen to me, okay? Listen to me, and stop thinking about everything else.'

A lot of their time in the lab was spent that way, whispering back and forth from their cages, spilling redundant secrets from their lives before they were taken.

There were multiple times after they got out when Kate said that Star was the reason she was alive, that she'd saved her, kept her sane. Star didn't think her friend would ever really understand just how much the same was true of her.

Two years down the line, everything had changed yet again; the two of them had joined Fang's gang, and later the flock as a whole. They'd brought down the bad guys, saved the world, been home in time for dinner. And then it was as if Star's own breathing was slowing down, like her whole life up until then had been one long panic attack, and she was finally feeling what it was like to actually fill her lungs with good, honest-to-God air.

Being in the house, being surrounded by the people she'd fought next to and saved and been saved by, suddenly that strange yearning that she'd felt back in her father's kitchen was gone. She'd barely even realised she was still carrying it with her from that day, but its abrupt absence was unmistakable, as if she hadn't known it was there until it left her.

She had a family of sorts – a weird, rag-tag, genetically altered family, but a family nonetheless. And contentment hit her before she had a chance to see it coming.

It was possible that maybe people didn't suck so much after all.

**A/N Please let me know what you thought of that. Like I said before, character-based work is a particular interest of mine, so it really helps to know how it's being received by people. Hope you're all having a wonderful lead-up to summer! :)**


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